


A brisk young sailor

by Naraht



Category: The Charioteer - Mary Renault
Genre: 1930s, 1940s, Angst, Don't Have to Know Canon, East Anglia, F/M, Gen, Internalized Homophobia, M/M, Medical Themes, Norway (Country), Rum and Sodomy, Scotland, Unrequited Love, World War II, at sea, in the closet
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-02
Updated: 2013-12-14
Packaged: 2018-01-03 05:30:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 9
Words: 40,831
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1066329
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Naraht/pseuds/Naraht
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A ramshackle trawler for his first command, an unsettlingly attractive sublieutenant, and danger in the fjords of Norway. For Lieutenant Ralph Lanyon it's only the first five months of 1940. But it's not a romantic story.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Makioka](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Makioka/gifts).



"A brisk young sailor came courting me  
Until he gained my liberty.  
He stole my heart with free good will  
And he's got it now, but I love him still.

There is an ale house in yonder town  
Where my love goes and he sits him down.  
He takes some strange girl on his knees  
And he tells her what he does not tell me."  
—Traditional

 

How strange it felt to be sitting on the stopping train from Liverpool Street as it rattled its way through Suffolk. It was late in the year already, well into November, and the low afternoon light shone into Ralph's eyes. In the sandy fields they were harvesting potatoes. Of all the places the Admiralty could have chosen to send him, it had come to Lowestoft in the end.

Across from him in the train was a middle-aged man in a tweed jacket and fair isle jumper. He lit his pipe and looked at Ralph speculatively.

"Come all the way from London?"

"Halifax," said Ralph without thinking. Then he corrected himself. "But London today, yes."

"Wavy Navy, eh? Bound for Lowestoft? Well, you won't be seeing the world with Harry Tate's outfit. More like up and down the Channel laying mines. I expect you were hoping for a destroyer!"

"When it's one's first command," said Ralph, "one can hardly afford to be choosy."

It was the expected thing to say on such occasions but it was no less heartfelt for that. Though Ralph had felt a twinge of regret upon opening his orders, he had felt equal measures of excitement. After nearly seven years in the merchant navy working his way up the hard way, the unaccustomed gold braid at his wrists and the new title of _Tempy. Lieutenant R.N.V.R._ were honours enough for the moment. As for a ship of his own, whether minesweeper or no... what greater happiness could a man ask?

"Besides which," Ralph added, "there's a war on."

Though you would not know it to look at people here. He'd made the crossing from Halifax in one of the earliest convoys, a load of grain bound for Liverpool. Hours of watching at the rail until his eyes ached, fog shrouding the other ships in the convoy and God knew what else besides. He'd come ashore to headlines about the sinking of the HMS _Courageous_ by a U-boat in the Western Approaches and yet, while men were dying at sea, only a few streets inland the good folk of Liverpool were going about their business almost untouched by the 'Phoney War.'

"Eh, yes," said Ralph's neighbour, returning to his paper. "Very true, very true."

By the time the train pulled into Lowestoft the light was fading. The railway station was right next to the docks; even from the platform one could see the suggestion of masts. Stepping out of the station he felt the smack of North Sea wind in his face, a light mist of salt droplets that settled his heart in a way that nothing else could. It was the sort of thing that one got to miss when it was absent for long. The weather in London had been warm for the season but here there was a storm settling in. Ralph pulled up the collar of his bridge coat and crossed the road. He never could resist a dockyard.

It was not difficult to find someone to point the way to the HMT _Stella Maria_. Even at that hour, that time of year, the yards were bustling with men.

"She's not pretty," warned the works-foreman, a muffler wrapped round his neck. He looked as though he'd probably sailed in the last war. "Just in from Grimsby. Still being fitted out, she is."

"Since when has prettiness mattered at sea?" said Ralph, a quiet feeling of satisfaction rising in him.

That feeling was not dispersed when he stood in front of the ship that would soon be his own. 

"There she is," said the foreman superfluously.

She was still in dry-dock, her rusty, battered hull exposed for all to see. Not a large ship by any means, and obviously never converted to oil from steam.

Nonetheless Ralph smiled. "She looks like an old friend."

"You been in trawlers before, sir?"

"Hardly to speak of. I spent a summer on a trawler fishing out of Kingston-upon-Hull but that was years ago now."

It had in fact been seven years ago, but the dock-master's look reminded him that it had also been on his summer hols from school. He was, after all, still only twenty-five.

"Well," said Ralph. "You needn't wait. I report to Sparrows Nest tomorrow and I shan't make a nuisance of myself aboard till then, but I should like to stay and look at her for a while if I won't be in the way."

Hands in his pockets, he stood and gazed at his ship until the grey sea faded into the grey sky and there was no more light to see.

***

Headquarters for the Royal Navy Patrol Service was up to the north of town. Next morning, after a meagre breakfast at his hotel, Ralph walked up along the seafront. Here and there one could see little flocks of ratings, ill at ease in new uniforms with their bell-bottoms and seaman's caps. Yet despite the naval presence, Lowestoft retained all the gaiety and excitement of a small English resort town out of season, which was to say, none at all. 

The wind had freshened further in the night, blowing straight from the North Sea. Empty flagpoles rung with the sound of it. Browned and wilted flowers nodded in the window boxes of determinedly respectable boarding houses. Out to sea there was…. Ralph squinted into the distance. Maybe that was a wherry on the horizon? Or a minelayer? Or maybe merely a trick of the light. It was strange to see so little shipping at sea now; the U-boat threat had drawn ships in.

Sparrows Nest Park had been a municipal pleasure garden before the war. All the accoutrements of provincial pleasure—bowling greens, pavilion, fountain—remained _in situ_ with a sort of forlorn irrelevance. On the hill above the park a lighthouse watched over the scene. Ralph walked up through the grounds to the RNPS depot, which looked as though it had been a tearoom not so long ago. Beside it some temporary huts were being run up.

The sound of hammering was almost as loud inside as out. Ralph tucked his cap under his arm and allowed himself to be led upstairs by a young Wren Third Officer.

She showed him into a small office which managed to be drab even though it was freshly painted. There was a large metal desk and two unmatched chairs. On the other side of the desk sat a Navy captain. No wavy braid for him. He remained firmly seated as Ralph came in.

"Take a seat, Lieutenant Lanyon."

"Thank you, sir."

The hammering continued unabated.

"It's a bloody nuisance, that's what it is," said the captain. "Cup of tea?"

"Yes please."

The Wren must have been lingering right outside the door because she came in again almost instantly with two big mugs. A smile at Ralph and then she withdrew again. The captain picked up his mug, wrapping his hands around it—for it was hardly warmer inside than out—and then gazing out to sea. He frowned for a moment, perhaps seeing the same ship on the horizon that Ralph had marked earlier. Ralph disciplined himself to composure, waiting for the moment, watching the steam rise from his untouched tea.

"Yes, Lieutenant Lanyon," said the Captain finally, rousing himself. "Young man like you, I daresay you were hoping for a bit of glory."

"I'd hoped to go where the Navy would find the most use for me."

The Captain smiled, not unkindly. "Well, we'll soon cure you of that." He paused. "You will have seen the orders already. HMT _Stella Maria_. She's getting on a bit in years, but a good solid ship from all I hear."

"I went down to the dockyard last night," said Ralph. "Had a look round."

"No doubt you've had all the gen, then, but in case you haven't: they're kitting her out as an anti-submarine trawler. Depth charges are being fitted next week, and a pom-pom gun. She's a bit small for the job, but you'll have to make due with what you've got."

"I'd assumed she was a minesweeper," said Ralph, who had been unable to make out any useful intelligence from the bare hull.

A shake of the head. "Good luck, Lieutenant. Either way you'll need it."

***

Though the ship was not due to leave Lowestoft for weeks yet, Ralph was kept busy from morning till night. There was no end of work: lists to be checked over, provisions to be ordered, plans and technical details to be mastered, paperwork to be completed and made shipshape. Many of the tasks involved in putting to sea he had done before, in one form or another, whether as assistant or _de facto_ delegatee. But this was his ship and, in the end, his responsibility alone. 

More to the point, these were Navy rules and Navy ways. He had never before served on a ship equipped with an ASDIC set, or depth charges, or a pom-pom gun. These were the accoutrements of war. Along with the men entrusted to his command, they would soon become his only cargo, and war his only business. He signed a slip acknowledging receipt of sixty cases of two-pounder shells, and rubbed wearily at his forehead. A bare six weeks training in Hove hardly seemed preparation for this.

It was an odd life, half at sea and half at shore. The ship, though nominally afloat, was all at sixes and sevens internally, so that he could hardly hope to sleep in the little cabin tucked belowdecks that was—most irregularly, by the standards of any respectably-sized ship—to be shared between himself and his second-in-command. He slept uneasily in his boarding house and then returned to his place amid the cold steel of the unfinished bridge. This was home as one reckoned it, for the foreseeable future. Ralph traveled light.

The work of preparation was more than any one man could hope to do. Along with a crew of twenty-odd seamen, signalmen, enginemen, stokers and telegraphists, they had promised him a sub-lieutenant or two to leaven the mix. R.N.V.R., of course.

Eventually. Once they were trained. Quite possibly they would have to be born first, though.

"Haven't they given you a day of leave in all this time?" said his landlady one morning.

Ralph's head jerked up. He had been about to fall asleep in his porridge, though he didn't like to admit it.

"Leave?" he said blankly.

"Don't pretend they don't give you any. Young man like yourself ought by rights to go out for a drink with a lady friend now and then, war or no war."

Ralph promised her nothing and told her nothing. Nonetheless that Saturday he had in hand a twenty-four hour leave and a return to Ipswich. He was off to a party hosted by a friend of a friend of Alec's. 

Alec had a network of friends clear across the country. It was a fact which had been brought forcibly home to Ralph less than a year previously, with a certain dull feeling of inevitability. At the time the whole affair had seemed a bore and a waste, but in retrospect it had its uses. With an introduction from Alec in hand he could not be a stranger in any British city.

From Ipswich he took a bus into the countryside. All Suffolk was plunged into the depths of the blackout. He never would have known where to alight if the driver, begrudgingly mollified by the Navy uniform, hadn't condescended to tell him.

Even on foot he could barely see the pub before he was upon it. If the flare of a cigarette lighter had come a moment sooner he might have changed course, but as it was he ran into the man at speed. There came a squeak of laughter; Ralph felt immediately that he had declared himself through not recoiling as quickly as he ought. He steadied himself against the man's shoulder; in return he felt an exploratory arm around his waist.

"And who have we here?" said the voice. The lighter revealed a Roman nose and the insignia of a Second Lieutenant in the Army. "Come to join the party, dear?"

"Lanyon. I'm a friend of Alec Deacon."

"Oh well, I suppose you _have_ , then. I'm a friend of Dorothy myself. Come along with you. I'm Chalmers by the way. None of the lot inside are worth bothering with."

Ralph went without fear into the den of robbers. The party was in the back room of the pub, a dozen or so young and rather merry men in Army uniforms. Alec had told him the story: a group of friends who had decided to join up together and comprised the only (so far as was known) queer anti-aircraft crew in the whole of Britain.

"We haven't seen more than a handful yet," said one lad. "But we're keeping our morale up."

"And that's not all we're keeping up," added another unnecessarily.

"There's something appealingly Phallic about the whole thing," said Chalmers, whose education was clearly of a slightly higher calibre than the others. "Don't you think?"

Ralph feared that a discussion of the sex appeal of Nazi uniforms was just around the corner. Yet it was not as if there were another pub and another party to which he could easily adjourn. It was this or nothing; indeed, given the lateness of the hour, it was almost certainly this whether he liked it or not. Schooled to pragmatism, he took the decision to make the best of it. 

He was several drinks behind the others and set himself doggedly to the task of catching up. The barmaid in the public bar had clearly taken the measure of the anti-aircraft crew already, but she proved only too willing to take notice of a Royal Navy lieutenant at pains to make himself agreeable. Ralph held steadily to doubles—which were more like triples—until the world began to swim into a softer focus.

By closing time he and Chalmers had reached an understanding—though how it had come about neither could have put into words. While the rest of the party set off down the road, they went round to the back of the pub, screened by the impenetrable darkness. Ralph leaned back against the pebbledash wall and fumbled, with an agreeable sense of drunken detachment, with the buttons of his wool trousers ( _officers, for the use of_ ). At the back of his mind there was a sense of relief, _thank God I didn't come all this way for nothing_. But he was ashamed of himself as soon as he thought it.

***

That night Ralph slept on an Army blanket on someone else's floor, fitful sleep disturbed by comings and goings of various kinds, neither surprising nor edifying, nor even particularly arousing. His host and fellow guest had only the evening leave, so they were up early. Ralph got up with them, unwilling to linger once he had been roused.

It was Sunday morning. All his diligence earned him was a long wait in the bus shelter in Shotley and another long wait on the railway platform at Ipswich. It was a dreary day, a fine mist of rain drizzling down without respite, and the wartime absence of ringing church bells only enhanced the feeling of utter torpor spread across East Anglia. His hangover was no better than might be expected and, as he waited, the familiar sense of self-loathing sank into his bones along with the damp. He ought not to have gone. At a time like this of all times.

His dark mood followed him all the way back to Lowestoft. He wanted nothing more than to go back to his shabby room, pull the curtains, get blind drunk and forget about the whole bloody thing. 

The curtains were all right. Blackouts, they made it seem as if the late autumn dusk were closing in already, and the darkness into which the room had been plunged obscured its floral wallpaper and its twee watercolours. The gin was all right, reliable as ever. He'd secreted a bottle or two under the bed in case of emergency.

As usual, the only awkward guest at the party was himself. He managed to get halfway drunk, but perhaps he was not drinking fast enough, for the nagging of his conscience caught up to him sooner than the gin did. Hard work the best cure, or so his father had always said. Though the source did nothing to recommend the saying, Ralph found himself mechanically sitting up and pulling on his boots once again. He wiped his face with a damp cloth and went back out into the rain.

What did the Royal Navy want with a half-drunk R.N.V.R. Lieutenant on a Sunday afternoon? That was the question. Certainly Lowestoft had no need of one. Nothing was stirring in town. Ralph walked along a crack in the pavement, heel to toe, and put only a foot or two wrong. There was nothing for it but to go back to his ship, where he felt he ought to have been in the first place. 

Even the dockyard was half-deserted, civilian workers idly pottering along on overtime. Ralph went onboard and went down to the wardroom, which was at last looking almost presentable, its chart table and red leatherette benches finally free of the clutter of construction and the thin layer of coal dust that had settled everywhere. Ralph sat down and began to read his way through a pile of manifests that he had already read once before.

He was nearly through the stack of papers when there came a brisk, matter-of-fact knock at the open hatch. A young officer came into the room, a single wavy R.N.V.R. braid at his sleeve. He had light brown hair, a serious expression on a boyish face, and was just good-looking enough for Ralph to notice the fact.

"Sublieutenant Kenneth Fairchild, sir."

"Yes?" said Ralph, vaguely regretting his tone of irritation as soon as he had uttered the word.

"They told me that I might find you here." He paused, looked as though he were about to salute, bare-headed, and then thought better of it. "Reporting for duty, sir. I'm to be your new First Lieutenant. Or First Sublieutenant, as it were."

"My only sublieutenant so far. Excuse me, they didn't tell me that you were coming. Welcome aboard the _Stella Maria_."

It was not the welcome that he would have prepared if he'd had the opportunity, and he felt that he had rather let the side down.

"Do take a seat," he added. "You've come straight from _King Alfred_ , I assume. Have you been aboard a trawler before?"

Fairchild did as he was asked, with only a glance around the still-spartan wardroom. "No, sir, not to speak of. Before I volunteered I had hardly been on a ship at all, unless you count rowing for Trinity First VIII."

"Oxford or Cambridge?"

"Oxford, sir."

Ralph nodded. "And what were you before the war?"

"Architectural assistant in Brighton. I was hoping to become an architect, before all this kicked off."

"Well, if you've any surveying experience at all, you'll have an advantage when it comes to navigation." Ralph paused. "I dare say that you'll find more than a few officers casting a sceptical eye over the whole of the 'Wavy Navy,' experience in shipping or no. But I don't mind it and I don't expect you will either. If you do your best, that's more than enough for me."

Fairchild looked as though he felt obliged to respond to that statement, but he said nothing. His hazel eyes were very piercing.

They looked at one another. Ralph felt his tongue suddenly thick in his mouth; he hoped it was due to the rum and suspected very much that it was not anything of the sort.

"You'll want to get settled," he said quickly, before the moment could assert itself. "Come onboard at 0600 tomorrow morning and we'll make a start then. Dismissed."

***

After that there was hardly any time to feel sorry for oneself, for on the next day the crew began arriving in Lowestoft. By the end of the week they were all not just in town, but aboard. Hammocks were rigged up belowdecks and the sailors moved in as the dockyard workers moved out.

Ralph now had twenty men to get to know. They were a ragbag crew, Hostilities Only ratings for the most part, seasoned fishermen mixed with a few green young men from London and Lancashire and the West Country. His signalman was a former bank clerk, a grammar-school boy who thought he ought to have been an officer, and in all justice probably should have been. (Ralph made a mental note to keep an eye on the man, on the theory that no boy is more trouble than the one who has just missed becoming a prefect.) His steward was a barman from Tewkesbury, while his cook was a trawlerman from Aberdeen. Ralph wondered whether it might not be better the other way round, but his was not to question why.

The crew was stiffened with a few career Navy ratings. One of the enginemen and one of the stokers, two of the seamen. His coxswain as well, Petty Officer Sylvester, who had served on board the _Malaya_ and brought with him certain assumptions about the smooth running of a Navy ship.

"It's not how they would do it on a battleship," he said, more than once. "Begging your pardon, sir."

"This is your ship now, Sylvester," said Ralph. "so this is how it's done. And take care that you don't let the sublieutenant hear you saying that."

The coxswain nodded with a sort of grudging respect, for the sublieutenant's enthusiasm for his first and only ship could not be questioned. As well as a certain facility with paperwork (which was a great relief) he had shown an indefatigable willingness to pitch in and make himself a fixture on board the ship (which was even more of one). Though his innocence of naval and maritime routine was undeniable, he spoke up when there was something he didn't understand, and he never had to be told more than once or twice. Under the circs Ralph considered that a more than reasonable ratio.

Ralph and his sub christened their new wardroom while censoring the men's first letters home over cups of kye. A filthy habit, thought Ralph, but a fondness for Navy cocoa seemed to have been the first thing that Fairchild had taken from his new status. The censoring of letters was a task that Ralph would have trusted Fairchild to manage on his own, but it was one that was new to Ralph as well, and he wanted to take the opportunity of having a private discussion on terms that were not too intimate.

"I think she'll be a happy ship," he said, looking up from a particularly incomprehensible scrawl.

"Of course," replied Fairchild.

"There's no 'of course' about it," said Ralph, though he knew that he would always adore his first command, right or wrong, in the same way that one always retains a longing for one's first love.

Fairchild looked back down at his letter as if he'd just been rebuked. His manner with Ralph had so far remained scrupulously, irreproachably correct, as if the role of Navy officer were one that he was still half-consciously playing rather than inhabiting. And yet underneath the keenness there was, barely perceptible, a very human desire to be liked.

Ralph knew the feeling only too well. He had hero-worshipped his own first captain, and a fair few of the subsequent ones. If Fairchild were playing the efficient first lieutenant then he had only to look to himself for the corresponding role of martinet commander.

"Macallister says that the coxswain is a bastard," said Fairchild thoughtfully, a few minutes later. 

He had a habit of absentmindedly licking his finger while leafing through the pages of a letter—one could just imagine him doing the same thing with architectural plans—and observing the operation straight on was a painful distraction for Ralph.

"Most likely a sign that the coxswain is doing his job," said Ralph. "Don't take any notice of it unless Macallister says it to your face. And if he does, tell him to keep his bloody mouth shut."

"You said yesterday that you wanted the men to feel that they could come to us with their problems."

Fairchild, in pursuit of the philosophical point, seemed only to realise that he'd contradicted the captain when Ralph gave him a hard look.

"There's a hell of a difference between problems and grumbling," said Ralph. "If you don't see that I don't know what I can tell you."

"Of course, sir. Sorry."

 _Who's being the bastard now?_ It was the obvious question and one which Ralph would rather not have confronted. He knew very well that he'd been keeping Fairchild at arms' length and not for any fault of his own. On a big ship it would have been different: a skipper could hold himself aloof from his busy wardroom with perfect propriety, exciting no comment whatsoever. And yet in the small world of a trawler one could hardly expect a happy ship without the easy intimacy of the wardroom.

Fairchild was refolding the letters now, carefully tucking them each back into their envelopes. He had fine hands, the hands of a draughtsman. If it had not been for the censor's stamp the recipient would have hardly known that the letter had been opened and read. 

Ralph wondered what Fairchild would say in his own letters home, sealed safely inside an privilege envelope. _Though I do my best to please him, I don't think the skipper likes me much._

Ralph sighed. "Look, Fairchild, when we're done with this lot I could do with a drink. How do you fancy the Anchor?"

"Sir?"

"Will you join me for a drink?" Ralph repeated. "It's not an order. You needn't if you'd rather not."

In retrospect it sounded uncomfortably like a proposition. If he'd ever had a queer skipper, he would certainly have seen it in that light. For a moment he felt a masochistic longing to see Fairchild recoil in horror from him, from what he had revealed himself to be. At least then they both would be sure of where they stood, freed from the need for pretence.

But Fairchild merely seemed surprised and pleased at being singled out for such an honour, conscious of no ulterior motive for its bestowal.

"Yes, sir," he said, offering Ralph a brilliant smile that could have been classified as a munition of war. "Of course. I'd be very happy to."

***

The Anchor was right across the road from the docks, by common consensus the officers' pub in Lowestoft. Two young officers turning down their collars as they came in out of the rain hardly merited a raised eyebrow. There was a hard-fought game of darts being played in the corner, while old salts were still discussing the sinking of the _Rawalpindi_ a fortnight past. A few noisy voices at the bar speculated where they would be come Christmas time, as if they were still public schoolboys looking forward to the hols.

Ralph edged himself in between two of the worst offenders. He nodded once when he caught the eye of the familiar barman, who liked to spend quiet hours in the pub (of which there were very few these days, what with half the R.N.V.R. washing up in Lowestoft) telling stories about life in the East Anglian fishing fleets before the Great War. The man instantly began pulling the usual pint.

"And one for my friend," said Ralph.

He cast a glance back towards Fairchild, who was sliding out of his coat. Just one amidst the crowds of Navy blue, his sleeves decorated with a lonely wavy braid, face flushed by the contrast between winter spray and the close warmth of the Anchor. 

_Yes_ , thought Ralph proudly, _I would pick him out of a crowd. Out of all the men here. I would._

Only a moment later it struck him how terrible a thing this was. One could not pick out a good sublieutenant by sight, and as for the other, Fairchild showed no sign of interest in auditioning. In fact he had just looked away from Ralph, smiling at a passing barmaid in a way that left no doubt where his preferences lay. Predictable and entirely depressing. The worst was that it didn't alter Ralph's feelings in the slightest.

 _Nothing that a drink or two won't fix_ , he told himself, the same sort of brisk bucking-up talk that he would have given to another man. _Just ignore it and you won't mind half as much._

Picking up the two pint glasses, he went over to Fairchild. There was not a chair free in the place, so they stood at the fringe of the spectators for the darts. Fairchild took his glass and raised it to Ralph.

"To the _Stella Maria_ ," he said. The toast could not have been anything else.

"To the _Stella Maria_ ," echoed Ralph. "And all who sail in her."

For a long while they talked shop. Nothing else held such urgent sway in their minds; it was all that either of them could think of. Outside the rain beat against the windows, a fierce late November storm blowing in.

"I wouldn't like to be out in that," said Fairchild, returning with more drinks.

Ralph took the proffered double. He'd switched from beer after the first pint.

"You'll see worse soon enough," he said.

"Do you think she'll be commissioned before Christmas?"

"I shouldn't say so. And even if she is, there'll be a hell of a lot of working-up to do before we put to sea. Don't forget, we've a crew of fishermen. There's a long way from herring to U-Boats, however much they know about trawlers. Or think they know."

Fairchild nodded. "At least they've that experience," he said, and one could tell that he was thinking of his own lack of it.

"Experience has a way of creeping up on you," said Ralph.

From there it was an easy step to sailors' yarns. Fairchild asked all the right questions, as if he'd only been waiting for the opportunity to hear every detail of a passage by trawler to Iceland, or the duties of a Second Mate on the Quebec-to-Avonmouth run. With a drink in hand Ralph could feel himself beginning to relax, becoming less the skipper of the _Stella Maria_ with each passing minute. There was something of exhibitionism in it. He was taking far too much pleasure in having the young man hanging on his words, especially as he knew full well that it was only because he was Fairchild's commanding officer.

Ralph downed another double quicker than he ought. He realised that he'd mentioned Alec twice in as many minutes, ostensibly discussing Bridstow, and in that falsely casual manner with which one is only fooling oneself. He bit his tongue, looked around the low-ceilinged little room for something else to discuss.

"Got a girl back home?" was what came to the surface.

Fairchild shook his head. "Sadly not," he said. "I suppose it's just as well. She'd only be always waiting for me to write while I was at sea."

"Looked as though you liked the cut of the barmaid, though."

"Who wouldn't?"

"Hell of a town for it," Ralph said, feeling the banter rising up, that seductive false cheer. "I suppose every tart in Lowestoft could have a Lieutenant Commander in her bed if she liked."

"Only if he turned up his sleeves so she didn't know he was Wavy Navy."

Ralph threw his head back and laughed at that. "What hope for the rest of us?"

After another pub, and God alone knew how many more drinks, it was Ralph who found himself going home with a girl. An amateur, with a narrow bed in a narrow house only one street back from the sea. Her husband, she said afterwards, had drowned in a gale a couple years back, no need to wait for the Nazis to do the job. Ralph crept out in the small hours of the morning as a baby began to wail in the next room, thinking that it had been a hell of a distance to go just to prove a point. Whatever point that had been.

Next morning there was Fairchild in the wardroom, correct as ever, tucking into a plate of eggs and toast. 

"Good morning, sir," he said, as if there were nothing at all worth remarking upon.

Ralph slid into his place and said nothing. If only he'd a second sublieutenant, he thought, things would have been different. As it was, they ate every meal together at a table set for two. Who could be expected to bear that sort of thing? Though he'd long ago got his fill of the lower decks, Ralph found himself wishing that they could mess with the men in the cozy homeliness of the foc'sle. He ate his breakfast and prayed fervently for the distractions of war.


	2. Chapter 2

Christmas came and went, as Christmas did whether aboard ship or in harbour.

Ralph, who had been at sea since he was nineteen and without family willing to receive him at home, was entirely familiar with the small observances of shipboard life: paper chains and holly in the wardroom, drinks all round, and dinners as lavish as possible under the circumstances, with Christmas pudding afterwards. Apart from that first year, he had never really felt the lack of anything more. Festivities conducted while steaming across the South China Sea, or riding at anchor off the coast of Brazil, were so different from an English Christmas that (so he had told himself) there was no point in making comparisons.

That December in Lowestoft he realised how wise his early decision had been. It was not the distance from home that struck him now, but the proximity. Most of his crew, including Fairchild, were off on liberty, enjoying the holiday as it was meant to be enjoyed and savouring their last taste of freedom before the _Stella Maria_ was commissioned. Ralph could have got away himself, if he had chosen. He had allowed Fairchild to believe that it was a misplaced sense of duty that kept him at his post, but in truth he could not think of anywhere else to spend the time. A weekend in London had little appeal, and he did not imagine that Alec would be pleased to see him pitch up in Bridstow now, though only two years ago they had spent the day playing happy families in a bedsitting room in Clifton.

So he stayed on board, with a only a skeleton crew for company. Sylvester had stayed behind too, saying dismissively that he was a widower and married to the Navy, but Ralph suspected him of having remained out of pity. They ate an early Christmas dinner together in the wardroom, at first in an atmosphere of constrained politeness which thawed out quickly under the influence of alcohol and seaman's yarns. The coxswain was an old Navy hand, having served long enough to have won his full complement of good conduct badges twice over, and was the proud possessor (in his own mind at least) of an equal measure of nautical wisdom. He doled it out to Ralph in careful doses, as a protective father might pour out Christmas port for his teenage son.

"Not that you won't know it, sir, but...."

Ralph did not always know it, but he accepted each offering with the reserved matter-of-factness expected of a captain.

In the early afternoon Ralph, afflicted with a sudden restlessness, could no longer stand the close fug of the wardroom, heated to a degree that could only have been reasonable in the North Atlantic and filled with the coxswain's drifting pipesmoke. He stretched, reached for the jacket that he had draped over the back of the chair.

"I've a few things to attend to," he said. "If you'll excuse me."

Sylvester got to his feet straightaway, snugging on his cap, willingly casting off their holiday collegiality as easily as he had put it on.

"Thank you, captain," he said. "Thirty years in the Navy and never Christmas in the wardroom until now."

"More festive on the lower decks, I'm sure," said Ralph. "But thank you. I appreciated the company."

It was a dim, grey afternoon, as quiet as if the town had been wrapped in cotton wool. One could not even call it bad weather for December. It was merely dreary, the sort of day that would be recorded in a ship's logbook with nothing to distinguish it from the next. Earlier in the day, one imagined that there had been some traffic to and from the churches of Lowestoft, with their war-silenced bells, but now the streets were empty save a few lonely ratings searching fruitlessly for diversion. Nothing was open. Nothing stirred. 

Not for the first time Ralph found himself nostalgic for Christmas in Hong Kong, or in Cairo.

Without thought his steps turned towards the one port he knew in town, that narrow house one street inland from the sea. He did not intend to knock at its peeling door; he did not even intend, really, to walk past. But the pavement in front was hardly broad, and the curtains on the front window were open even though the sun was already beginning to sink towards setting. Ralph glanced in, wondering idly what man she might have installed for the occasion.

A tiny tree stood on a table by the gas fire, one bar lit. The girl was sitting in an armchair, baby in her lap. She looked up and he was not quick enough to look away. She got up and came to the door.

In the doorway she stood holding the baby, glancing down the street as if she knew the neighbours were watching. Dorothy, her name was. He remembered it now. She looked younger in the half light, her pale lips without the dark red lipstick that she had been wearing the other night, her hair only loosely pulled back with Kirby grips. Just the opposite of what one might think, and somehow it made him feel better disposed towards her than he might have done.

"If you were wanting to come to dinner, the least you could have done was said," she complained, for all the world as if they were something to one another, as if they had shared something more than a drunken fumble one night when nothing better had come along.

"I happened to be passing. Thought I'd wish you Merry Christmas, that's all."

"Well, in with you, then, or on with you. I'm not standing here letting all the heat out."

Ralph wondered idly whether tarts charged extra on Christmas Day, though of course she'd had nothing off him before but a couple of drinks. Then the baby grabbed at the gold braid on his sleeve, leant forward nearly out of Dorothy's arms in an attempt to gum at it welcomingly.

"Look," said Ralph. "I've errands to run. Half an hour?"

"The chicken will be all dry," she said, in a tone that implied concession.

"Half an hour," he repeated.

Not above twenty minutes later he returned with bottle of wine from the wardroom and a box containing a Noah's Ark set which he had bought, at extortionate cost, off one of the Stella Maria's sailors. The man had arrived with the set half-completed and spent all of his spare time over the previous weeks whittling away at the tiny wooden animals. Ralph had assumed that it was meant for some favoured grandchild but, when he broached the question, was merely met with a shrug and an invitation to name his price.

Dorothy had set her small kitchen table for two. From where Ralph sat with his back to the cooker, he could see out the back window, which was grimed with frost and salt spray, lightly spotted with mildew. There was a tiny, unloved garden behind, where a line of nappies hung drying. 

"I told you it would be dry," said Dorothy, casting a doubtful eye over the roast chicken.

"Not in the slightest," Ralph replied. "It's top notch."

He did not have to force his praise; it was the best dinner he'd had in a long while, for all that it had been served on Woolworths plates.

"Cousin works in a butchers' in Leiston. My Rob used to bring him fish all the time."

She blinked then and looked away.

"More wine?" Ralph said, topping up her glass.

Sitting there as the baby crawled around on the lino underneath the table was uncomfortably—and, for Ralph, most unfamiliarly—like playing house. He found himself trying to estimate the age of the child, which was not at all his area of expertise; he could only conclude that it was a very near thing whether or not it belonged to her dead husband.

"It's good for him," she said finally, "to have a man about the house. Makes it seem more like Christmas, don't you think?"

"I wouldn't know." 

Ralph regretted it the moment it was out of his mouth. For a bare moment she looked as though she had been slapped; worse, she looked as if it were exactly what she expected from a man.

"I only meant... never mind."

Outside the darkening sky was slowly clearing, shading from pearly grey to a faint lavender. There was a sudden shaft of sunlight, picking out an undistinguished patch of brickwork in lurid shades of gold, and then late afternoon subsided quickly into night. It reminded Ralph of that moment—which one only had to see once in order to find it unforgettable—when a sinking ship finally settles beneath the waves. He was not at all drunk; he only wanted to be. They had finished the bottle of wine.

A woman opened the door in the house behind, aimed a hard look across the garden. "Blackouts!"

Dorothy got up and twitched the kitchen curtain closed. "Nosey parkers."

Ralph suspected that the blackout curtains were not the main point of contention between the two houses, but he said nothing, only helped her pile the dirty dishes into the sink (she gave him a look of surprise at that) and followed her through to the front room. There they sat together in the half-light of a shaded lamp, listening to the Home Service, while the baby chewed happily on a carved giraffe.

"I'll put him to bed soon," said Dorothy with a smile.

Where would it all end? Breakfast in bed on Boxing Day, a dressing gown hanging permanently on the back of the door, a little boy with a man about the house. He could see the idea forming in her mind already, blazoned against a background of war and glamour. It was not as if she were not used to having a man who went to sea, and now she had landed a Navy Lieutenant in her nets. Once a good-time girl, always a good-time girl, but she would happily keep house for him while he was in port, take whatever he gave her in pay, and let the rest of it alone.

Just contemplating that prospect was enough to make his mind up. "I'm not staying." 

"I wasn't asking you to move in," she retorted, unconvincingly. 

Yet there was an artfully mocking twist in her voice, as though she were disdaining him for a suggestion that he had never made. He suspected that she, a practical woman through it all, would have accepted with resignation an early departure on Boxing Day.

"Christ, of course you weren't. Not staying tonight, I mean."

"Why the hell not? Don't like what you see, now that you've taken a closer look? Took a whole Christmas dinner to work that out, did it?"

Brow furrowed with concern, the baby looked up at his mother, holding a little wooden sheep in either hand. 

"Well," said Ralph, "if you expect a quick fuck as payment, then for God's sake put him to bed and let's get on with it."

Another night, with a bit more to drink, he might have gone through with it merely to save the trouble. Tonight he did not think he could manage. Something in it was too close to the bone.

Dorothy was staring at him now, incredulous and defeated.

"Got someone else, have you," she said finally.

"I suppose I have," said Ralph. He paused. "I'm sorry."

Alone, he walked slowly back to the harbour. The night was frosty and a full moon shone over the sea.

***

The final days of the year went sliding past with a hurry of small tasks which seemed as if they might never be completed before the commissioning. But the ship slowly began to feel like a real ship and the crew, returned from their holidays, like a proper crew. 

"You know how it is when you get home," said Fairchild, back from a family Christmas in Hertfordshire. "You wonder why you never appreciated it properly before, and then once it's been a few days you start to feel that if something doesn't happen soon, you may go mad. I told my nephew Jack that I couldn't stay, I had U-boats to sink. Though I'm sure he thinks I'm commanding a destroyer."

"I wonder what gave him that impression," said Ralph with a smile.

Fairchild shook his head, faintly embarrassed. "You can't turn up in uniform and then tell a five-year-old you've not even been out of harbour. What sort of uncle would that be?"

"An honest one." Ralph laughed. "Come on, sub. We've work to do."

With the new year came days of sea trials, bringing the _Stella Maria_ out of harbour at last. Steaming at her full ten knots—or just under nine-and-a-half, as it turned out. Crash stops. Maneuvering. She proved herself to be no more and no less than what she was: a North Sea trawler, neither fast nor new, but sturdy and reliable in her way. The dockyard had done well by her, and she passed her tests with full marks.

On the tenth of January the _Stella Maria_ finally had her commissioning. It was a low and foggy day, hovering just above freezing, when the crew assembled on deck. All were in their best uniforms, even the most hardened of the fishermen having been smartened up for the occasion. Ralph himself had spent more time than he liked to admit in front of the tiny mirror in his cabin, making sure that the shirt, collar, tie and jacket of his formal dress—not to mention his sabre—were all perfectly shipshape and then brushing his fair hair again for good measure. He had only given over when Fairchild appeared to make his own final inspection. They had given one another guilty looks and Ralph, straightening his tie, had made promptly for the companionway. 

Ralph could not help wondering how Fairchild—and, at a further remove, himself—would have looked in the dress uniforms of the Napoleonic Navy, but he quickly dismissed the thought as unworthy of the occasion. 

On deck, as he scanned the faces of his small crew, standing shoulder to shoulder and watching him expectantly, he could see that for once they felt the full seriousness of the day. He felt it himself. He had attended commissioning ceremonies before, but never for a Royal Navy ship, and never before—naturally enough, but somehow the thought presented itself as an important one—for a ship that he himself was commanding. Despite the presence of the captain from Sparrows Nest, and a scattering of other senior officers, it was his show. All eyes front and centre.

Oddly the feeling was a familiar one, that of a new Head of School being called up to read the lesson in chapel. If it had been Odell watching him, instead of Fairchild. If a Head of School could order boys to their death. 

In a steady, careful voice, Ralph read out his own letter of commission; then he began the solemn, weighty clauses of the Articles of War.

"On the British Navy, under the good providence of God, the wealth, safety, and strength of the kingdom chiefly depend..."

Towards the middle of the section on desertion and absence without leave, there was a sudden spit of rain. Drops puddled and blurred on the sheet of paper, as though the watery sea were already receiving them into its kingdom. 

Ralph shook off the paper and continued with the catalogue of sins. Miscellaneous offences. Offences punishable by ordinary law.

"Every Person subject to this Act who shall be guilty of Murder shall suffer Death," he read. "If he shall be guilty of Manslaughter he shall suffer Penal Servitude, or such other Punishment as is herein-after mentioned. If he shall be guilty of Sodomy with Man or Beast he shall suffer Penal Servitude."

He read that line as levelly as any other. And rightly so; there was no place for such carrying-on aboard ship. Nevertheless there was a rustling in the ranks, a veiled snicker. One man nudged another. Nothing to do with him, but Ralph could still feel the clenching of his stomach. He kept his eyes firmly on the page and well away from Fairchild.

It cast a pall over the rest of the commissioning, as if that were what it had been meant to do. After the _Stella Maria_ 's pennant was hoisted finally into the grey sky, after all the applause and congratulations were done, after the few guests who turned out for the commission of an armed trawler in wartime had begun to drift away, Ralph's mind was still running on 'beastliness.' He wondered whether this, after all, was how the label had stuck.

Fairchild came up, offering him another glass of champagne. It had begun to rain again, so that the drink was stirred by the impact of raindrops. Ralph toasted and drank.

"Bloody hell, but those Articles are fearsome," said Fairchild. "You gave it a bit of hellfire in the delivery too. They'll be terrified to smoke a fag at the wrong time of day."

"That's always been the idea. Think of how it was with the press gangs, and remember: the thing about being an officer is that you're always outnumbered."

Looking around the deck at the bedraggled and merry remnants of their crew, Fairchild laughed. 

"It's true," Ralph added. "Don't discount it just because you think it's obvious."

"No, sir. Of course not, sir." Fairchild paused. "The Commander over there was just telling me that they've created a new badge for the RNPS. Six months service. So we'll be on our way now."

"The devil knows where we'll be by then," said Ralph, to whom July seemed as distant as the moon.

It was telling, he thought, that half a year's completed service in small ships was considered worthy of special recognition, but he did not say this.

"As long as it's not Lowestoft, I shan't complain."

"I shall expect to remind you of that in six months."

They both laughed, drinking their champagne in the cold rain, but Ralph wondered.

 _Together_ , he thought. _That would be one thing. Probably better if we aren't. But let him be alive in six months and I shan't ask anything else._

***

Two days later they had their orders. The _Stella Maria_ was to set sail in convoy to join the 30th Anti-Submarine Striking Force at HMS Bacchante, Aberdeen. At her maximum speed of ten knots it would take more than thirty hours—in good weather at that.

Ralph sat studying the charts while Fairchild chivvied the crew into making their final preparations. They cast off at first light, which was not so early in the morning in December. Ralph was hoping to make it to Aberdeen by twilight on the following day but he knew full well that this was the hope of an optimist.

None of the men knew their destination, of course.

"I'm for the Med," he heard Sanders saying outside the bridge. "Give me Gibraltar any day."

He was a seaman, an RN type, most likely knew what he was talking about. Most of the fishermen, on the other hand, probably thought Harwich a far southern destination.

"Just let me drop a depth charge on a few Nazis," said another. "That's what I signed up for."

With such a raw crew, Ralph was not under any illusions. Heaven help them if they met a U-Boat on the journey north, even in convoy. There would be weeks of training and working-up before they had any hope of calling themselves a proper crew. But they did, by and large, know the sea. One had to think that was the important thing.

It was a beautiful day for leave-takings, clear and cold. The low light of the rising sun picked out all the buildings along the seafront: the Anchor, rather shabby in the light of day, and the boarding houses with their flower pots taken in for the season. A few people had gathered on the hard to see them off. One or two of the dockworkers, not yet having had their fill of sending their ships out into danger and destruction. And there...

"Jesus," said Ralph in an undertone.

It was Dorothy, standing with her pram amongst the other well-wishers as if there were nothing odd about it. Caught by the sun, her dark hair looked almost auburn. She was blinking in the low light, hand shading her eyes.

"Slow ahead now," said Ralph, a moment or two before he had intended.

Fairchild was out on deck, having seen to the casting off, but even from the bridge Ralph could tell that he had spotted her as well.

_Christ almighty, they've got you coming and going._

By the time that Fairchild came up to the bridge, _Stella Maria_ was out of harbour and underway. An honour guard of seagulls wheeled overhead, dipping through the dark coal smoke that belched from the funnel, waiting for a cargo of herring that would never be hauled in.

"There's Sparrow's Nest," said Fairchild, casting a nostalgic glance to port, towards the pleasure gardens and the lighthouse on the hill above. "One wonders when we'll be back this way."

"Lowestoft Light, more to the point," said Ralph. "Right. We've just passed Lowestoft Ness. She's bearing ten degrees. Half ahead. Five knots, if our speed trials were correct, which I wouldn't count on. Coming into Lowestoft North Road, with Holm Sand to starboard, bang in the middle of the swept channel. And we've a convoy rendezvous to manage. Your watch, isn't it?"

Fairchild swallowed very visibly. "Sir, I don't—"

"Quite right. Never relieve the watch officer if you have any doubts. And never hesitate to ask the captain. As it happens the shoals around here are rather hellish, you've seen the chart, never mind the question of mines. You'll forgive me if I don't give you the bridge until we're safely out to sea and in convoy."

"Yes, sir," said Fairchild, relieved. "Thank you, sir."

Ralph smiled. "Never thank me for doing something sensible."

Within the hour they had joined the convoy and were steaming northwards. Ralph gave the watch to Fairchild but he remained by his side on the bridge, ready to assist if there were anything that required attention. It was good to be back at sea. He could feel himself relaxing himself into it, the reassurance of tasks and routine, as familiar and well fitting as old gloves. It was such a fine day that one could hardly imagine U-Boats lurking under the lazy waves, which were as deep a blue as Ralph had ever seen.

More of an immediate concern were the minefields through which they were so gaily steaming. The convoy held strictly to the swept channel, but accidents did happen; had happened, would happen again.

Fairchild spent the afternoon brushing up on his navigation, taking sextant sightings, poring over the tables, making corrections. Ralph had him calculate their position by dead reckoning as well; a scatter of tiny crosses began to stumble their way up the coastline of the chart. He had, really, a natural talent for it. 

Ralph felt a fierce surge of pride. His ship. His crew. His sub-lieutenant (this, perhaps, most of all). He liked to see Fairchild bent intently over the chart table, and had to restrain himself from laying an encouraging hand on the young man's shoulder.

When the first dog watch began, the sun had already set. Ralph sat this watch with Fairchild; so, too, the middle watch in the small hours of the morning. There was a strange intimacy in those pitch-black hours. On the deck there were seamen standing their watches, peering into the darkness for any sight of the blacked-out convoy ships that were steaming north invisibly at their side. But together on the bridge, illuminated only by the compass lights, were Ralph and Fairchild alone.

They spoke only when they needed to. It was better that way, thought Ralph. He could not have said anything that he wanted to say. At sea it hardly seemed to matter.

He watched the slow dawn by himself, with Fairchild asleep below. The other trawlers faded back into existence, grey against grey in the blurred light. He was beginning to feel the pull of fatigue now, more than twenty-four hours awake. It occurred that perhaps he'd been a touch too protective, or perhaps not willing enough to let go of responsibility. He could not, after all, stand every watch forever. And he would have to have his wits about him when they came finally into Aberdeen.

The sun was just peeping above the horizon when Fairchild stumbled back onto the bridge, cup of kye in hand. He smiled willingly enough but the smile came through its own haze of weariness. Four hours in a bunk on a trawler were not most people's idea of a night's sleep.

"Good morning, sir," said Fairchild, smiling again. 

He had a warm, obliging smile, very slightly gap-toothed, an endearingly welcome touch of imperfection in a man usually so carefully composed. One could tell that he had even made the effort to comb his light brown hair before coming on watch, though it had been instantly disarranged by the fresh wind on deck. Ralph fought the urge to reach out and tuck back an errand strand.

"It is," said Ralph. "And now that it's light, I intend turning in."

"Yes, sir," said Fairchild, a sudden accession of crispness.

"I trust you. Remember that includes trusting you to wake me."

Admonition delivered, Ralph went below. He pulled off his boots and lay down fully clothed on his bunk. Across the cabin, the rumpled bedclothes of Fairchild's recently vacated berth seemed to offer a reproach. One imagined that they were still warm. But really one would rather not think of it.

He fell asleep quickly but slept lightly, half his mind still conscious of the pitch of the engines and the chop of the waves. He dreamt tangled dreams about his sub-lieutenant, worry mixed with an ache of tenderness, in which he was still on the bridge but also holding Fairchild in his arms, whispering an admonition which for all the world sounded like love. In the dreams Fairchild's face mingled with Odell's, and the thought of schooldays long gone, until he was left recalling those first bitter days at sea when it had only been the memory of Odell's loyalty that told him he was not alone in the world. 

He had a confused idea that there was something important he had forgot to ask Odell. Something urgent. He had to remember what it was.

That sudden thought quenched him into wakefulness. The rhythm of the trawler's engines came back into his ears and, with it, the consciousness of reality. He sat up abruptly, shook his head. There was nothing to ask. Odell had probably forgot him years ago. And quite right too.

He got up, rang for the steward. He washed his face and shaved. Brushed his hair, squared his cap. Ate, alone in the wardroom, a bowl of porridge. After that he felt almost clear-headed.

At the top of the companionway he paused for a moment, looking through the salt-streaked glass of the wheelhouse. Fairchild was facing in the other direction. When he turned and saw Ralph, a expression of quiet pride spread across his face. His report was simple and correct; nonetheless, it was that first look which spoke most eloquently of all.

Despite all of Ralph's hopes, they came to Aberdeen in the end by dark. The antisubmarine boom in the harbour had been closed early so they spent another night at sea, riding at anchor just offshore. One could sense the blacked-out city more than see it, hovering on the edge of sight like something not quite acknowledged.


	3. Chapter 3

They had sailed from Lowestoft in the rush of wartime, the ship barely finished with her fitting-out and still all at sixes and sevens. At Aberdeen they began with their working-up, the shaping and testing of men rather than machinery. Shipboard drills were familiar to Ralph, but the content was as new to him as it was to his crew: action stations, gunnery, Asdic and depth charges. He settled into harness with Fairchild, the two of them pulling side by side with that intimacy where one hardly has to look at another man's face to know what he is thinking, or what he is about to say.

Ralph grew used to hearing Fairchild around the ship, reproving and correcting the men in terms that for the most part could have come from his own mouth. And just occasionally Fairchild came out with something that he would never have mentioned.

"What was that?" he had heard Fairchild saying, just as he was coming up to the depth charge racks. 

The sharpness in his sub's tone had made Ralph linger just out of sight around the corner, waiting to hear what it was all about. He kept his eyes fixed on the rusty bulkhead, thinking idly that there would have to be a good deal of painting done before the _Stella Maria_ put to sea again.

"Only saying, the skipper'll want it..."

"The captain," said Fairchild.

"One and the same," came the laconic reply.

So that was what it was. Nicolson had been one of the original crew of the _Stella Maria_. He was probably still missing her former skipper, a lifelong sailor of sixty-five who (so Ralph had heard) had chosen retirement sooner than trade in his fisherman's Gansey for the wavy braid of an R.N.V.R. officer.

"Only if you're fishing for herring and not for U-Boats," said Fairchild. "This is the Navy."

Ralph suppressed a smile and turned away. The same smile floated to the surface again fifteen minutes later, when Nicolson had come to him with a "begging your pardon, Captain" that seemed—as far as he could judge—entirely natural.

Two officers were a slender complement even for a ship as small as the Stella Maria. Ralph would have felt easier—on the bridge as in the wardroom—with a second sub-lieutenant, yet in the winter of 1939 even green subs were in short supply, and the needs of hastily fitted-out old trawlers were well down the list of Admiralty priorities. 

What that meant was that when at sea they would be faced with the exhausting grind of a permanent two-shift rotation (four hours on and four off, round the clock), and when at Action Stations, whenever that might be, with the reality that the demands of war left them spread far too thin. 

His lone sub-lieutenant was, most irregularly when it came to the regular Navy, responsible for both gunnery and navigation. Though Ralph had learned his way around a sextant long ago, he also had to master the art of directing the fire of their two-pounder pom-pom gun. 

"After all," said Fairchild, with that occasional ingenuous humour that reminded one he had been an Oxbridge undergraduate not so long ago, "I might be having a bath at the time."

Ralph had winced and made no reply, thinking that Fairchild would soon learn not to say things like that. Hopefully it would be soon enough.

***

That Friday night, a good few of the men were out on leave, and Fairchild among them. Up on the bridge a young and green Hostilities Only rating was standing watch, such as it was. Ralph lay in his bunk, letting himself be lulled by the gentle movement of a ship at anchor, and the reassuring thought behind it that she was safe in harbour with a stout antisubmarine boom across the entrance.

He had a letter from Alec that was overdue an answer by at least a fortnight. It had been addressed to him at Lowestoft and seemingly made the trip up to Aberdeen a few days after the Stella Maria, whereupon Ralph had scanned it and tucked it away in a spare Admiralty Pilot in the hopes of spare time that had never materialised. 

It might be a good idea to answer it now. Alec had never been one to worry or make demands, even when they had been together, but one might argue that two weeks of silence was a different matter in the Navy during wartime than it had been on the Quebec-to-Avonmouth run, when Ralph had often arrived home sooner than his letters.

Alec's scrawl was getting more illegible—and more doctorly—by the day. Most of the letter was an account of emergency surgery that would have doubtless been more dramatic in person. The rest was taken up with a discussion of Sandy, another medical student with whom Alec had just moved into shared digs. Alec was in love; the signs were only too clear. It only surprised Ralph that it had taken him this long.

Though Ralph mustered a few lines in reply, he kept thinking of the Naval censor. As a confessional, letters were hardly a substitute for his sea journals, which he had left tucked away in a chest under Alec's bed back in Bridstow. Under Alec and Sandy's bed now, he supposed. But there was no point thinking of it, nor any point in regretting the left-behind journals. One could not risk having them read aboard ship, not when one was the captain; there was simply too much to lose. A similar calculus applied when it came to unguarded letters, which suddenly seemed a risk too great to be borne.

Frustrated in more ways than he could express, Ralph sighed and laid aside Alec's letter along with his own abortive reply, which had only got as far as an apology for his lack of correspondence. He had just pulled up the blanket, thinking to take advantage of the unusual chance for complete privacy, when he heard careful steps coming down the gangway. 

The hatch swung open. It was Fairchild, carrying a heaping armful of blankets and other kit. Behind them all one could only just make out his smile.

"What the hell?" said Ralph, sitting up quickly. "I thought you were on late leave."

 _Why on earth_ , he wanted to say, _when I've given you every opportunity to get away and let me alone, can't you bloody well take it?_ But the feeling passed quickly.

"I was, sir." Fairchild threw the lot down on his bunk and sat down beside it. "But first I went down to collect our cold weather gear."

For the last few days the men had been making their way in twos and threes to the station for the issue of duffel coats, gloves, oilskins, and all the other gear appropriate to the North Sea in winter. Already the old salts had broken out their own jumpers and mufflers, unwilling to stand on ceremony in the face of a cold wind. They looked a ragtag bunch; Ralph suspected they always would, Navy or no.

"But it's 2300 now," he objected, amused. "And it looks as though you've cleaned out the whole of the stores."

Fairchild lit a cigarette and looked rather pleased with himself. "I got yours too, sir. Thought I might as well. And Jean—she's the WREN who issues the things, have you met her?—said we should take a few extra blankets. Her dad teaches archaeology at the university, he's always going over to Norway on digs, and she says it gets bloody cold up there. Wherever it is we're going." He paused. "After all that conversation I asked her out for a drink. So we went straightaway."

"You took a girl round Aberdeen with all that lot under tow," said Ralph flatly.

" _Carpe diem_ , isn't that right? It had already been issued, so I was buggered if I was going to return it, not after she'd been so generous. Anyway, she didn't seem to mind."

Ralph couldn't help but laugh. Nothing could be more unlike his usually orderly-minded sub.

"Piss-poor planning," he said. "Hardly officer material."

But Fairchild had already begun to fold and sort the pile of gear, as neatly as one could have asked.

"All I know," he said, "is that it's not a blanket I want keeping me warm tonight."

"Hell no," said Ralph emphatically.

It was the expected response on such occasions, and it was even true, if not quite in the way that Fairchild might have reckoned it. _Lucky girl_ , thought Ralph.

"We're going to the cinema on Tuesday. _The Wizard of Oz_. I could ask if she has a friend...?" 

"Hmm?" said Ralph.

"If you'd like to come along, that is. If you can spare the time."

Across the narrow gap between their bunks, Fairchild handed him a much tidier pile. Heavy jumper and socks, hand knit by the looks of them. A duffel coat. Two wool blankets, scratchy as hell. 

Ralph thought he probably deserved them, a modern hair-shirt in Navy blue. He would fall asleep under the burden of their weight without even noticing.

"Right," he said. "Thanks. Maybe I will."

***

The letter that he received from Alec by return of post was brief but informative in its way. He read it one afternoon on the bridge, when he was certain that no one would be looking over his shoulder.

>   
> _About writing, not to worry. I'd assumed you had better things to think about. In case you haven't, there is a list at the bottom._
> 
> _Sandy and I have seen The Wizard of Oz twice now. Sandy says it's 'fantabulosa.'_  
> 

(Ralph considered this told him all he needed to know about Sandy.)

>   
> _Half of Bridstow (our half) is humming 'Over the Rainbow.' I suspect there is a psychoanalytic explanation if only I could find it. Too busy at the moment with rounds._
> 
> _All that,_  
>  _Alec_
> 
> _P.S. Sandy's people are at 14 Nile Street in Morningside. They are reputedly happy to have a Navy officer to dinner if you fancy a change. (Not sure they know what they are letting themselves in for!)_  
> 

Appended on the back of the letter came a short and select list of Edinburgh sights made out in a loose, looping hand. One assumed it was Sandy's.

>   
>  _Black Bull, Leith Street (v good)_   
>  _Waverley Steps Bar (posh, variable)_   
>  _Crawford's Tea Rooms, Princes Street (everyone goes)_   
>  _Calton Hill (in extremis)_   
> 

At the bottom it simply concluded, _Aberdeen? (I wouldn't)._

That parenthetical remark said even more about Sandy. If only that he'd never been to sea. 

Any city swarming with sailors offered no end of opportunities. Minus Sandy's carefully circumscribed local knowledge, Ralph could simply have gone out on the town, trusting to the blackout and the exigencies of war to provide. Not for the first time, though he'd found Ipswich a little too close for comfort.

Perhaps it was sheer perversity that led him to reject the both the genteel attractions of Edinburgh and the earthier attractions of Aberdeen, though one might have argued that it was exactly the opposite. Either way an overdose of Sandy had something to do with it—an irony that he could hardly have shared with Alec.

So it happened that he spent the next night he could get away on a double date with Fairchild, Fairchild's girlfriend, and Fairchild's girlfriend's friend, a freckled WREN of eighteen. She was almost painfully innocent, overawed at having a Navy Lieutenant to help her on with her coat, and an entirely _pro forma_ kiss goodnight—Ralph had rather assumed that it was expected—left her flustered into incoherence.

He did not imagine that he would see Kathleen again. 

"Wasn't she grand?" said Fairchild at the end of the evening, as they made their way back to the ship. A few pale snow flurries swirled around them.

Ralph paused in an empty doorway to light a cigarette out of the wind. The place smelt faintly of piss. Even so, he suspected that not a few courting couples had ended their evenings here. Down the street, somewhere in the depths of the blackout, as if sunk under the sea, a girl was giggling.

"Jeanie?" said Ralph.

"Who else?"

They fell easily back into step again, boots clattering on the frosty tarmac. 

"Well," said Ralph diplomatically. "There were two of them."

Fairchild laughed. "Sorry about that, really. She was going to invite someone else, only the other girl couldn't get away. Hope you didn't…"

"Not at all," said Ralph, who didn't fancy discussing it. "A night out is a night out."

Evidently untrue, as far as Ralph's nights out went. He could have done with twice the drink and a third of the company. But one could hardly say that. 

Together they picked their way through the shipyard, a dark tracery of girders and masts, full of traps for the unwary. On first glance one would have thought the place was deserted, but footsteps and small snatches of song echoed between the steel hulls, other sailors each making their way back to their own ships. There was an unshakable rightness in the thought of the Stella Maria awaiting their return lying at anchor, though a little less in the realisation that they had missed the liberty boat and would have to make their own way back.

"Careful there," said Ralph, grasping at the heavy wool of Fairchild's greatcoat. "Mind the bollard."

Fairchild stepped away from the water's edge; Ralph quickly released his sleeve. Though Fairchild had not paced Ralph that evening, drink-for-drink, he obviously was feeling it. 

"Didn't see it," he said. "Thanks. Could have gone straight to the bottom there without the need for German intervention. Sir."

"Always watch yourself in a shipyard," said Ralph.

He bundled his sub into the ship's dinghy and then took the oars himself. Warm work at least, though with one poor stroke icy water trickled down the oars, soaking into his gloves. Ralph attempted to force himself to keep his mind on the job.

In the middle of the harbour it was deathly quiet, only the lapping of the pitch-black sea against the boat and the hanging fog of his sub's warm breaths. Each exhalation was visible, as distinct as the stars above.

"Oughtn't I?" said Fairchild, shifting his weight to lean questioningly towards Ralph.

"There's a time and a place to stand on ceremony," Ralph replied. "Not at half eleven on a January night."

"It's not just that, sir. Rowing's one thing I can do. We were Head of the River in '37."

"You'll have to show me sometime," said Ralph mildly.

Fairchild most likely assumed that Ralph had been to university as well; so far Ralph had done nothing to disabuse his sub of the notion. He rowed on in silence, and was glad to hear the coxswain's hail from the railing. Last aboard, barring the men who had leave till the morning.

Together they went belowdecks, to the single, shared officers' cabin. The stumble of Fairchild's boots on the metal decking sounded very loud in the quiet ship. Ralph ignored this; it was no business of the ratings what time their officers returned from a night out.

It was more difficult to ignore Fairchild in the flesh. Having lived in shared dormitories and crowded mess decks since the age of seven, a lack of privacy was hardly strange to Ralph, even if he'd mostly had his own cabin as a second mate in more recent years. He knew perfectly well how to keep his eyes to himself and how to keep his mind off of things.

Perhaps then it was the unexpectedness of the close quarters, or the intimacy of sharing his space with only one other man. Or perhaps it was the man in question.

Ralph got into bed quickly, still in his clothes, although he was not expecting to be called on deck during the night. He closed his eyes, then found them drifting open again.

Fairchild was shrugging his unbuttoned white shirt from his shoulders, his bare skin pale in the low light.

Ralph closed his eyes again, firmly this time. But for a long time he did not sleep.

***

Next morning after Stand Easy came the inevitable parade of Captain's Defaulters. Two of the liberty men, out of a crew of twenty-odd, hadn't returned to the _Stella Maria_ until after morning divisions.

They were brought into the wardroom by the coxswain, wearing his most officious and formal expression: Sanders, a Navy hand of twenty-five or so, stoic in his dark beard, and Gillies, one of the youngest of the Hostilities Only ratings. Ralph sat back at the wardroom table and watched Fairchild attempting to look stern. 

Upon questioning Sanders spun them a story about a last bus—or first bus, surely?—but the fact of the matter remained.

"When were you meant to be back?" interrupted Ralph.

"Half six this morning," said Sanders. 

"You're regular Navy, Sanders, surely you know that even better than I do."

"Yes, sir. Sorry, sir."

"Well then. Spirits stopped for the next week and leave as well. Take a look at the bus schedule next time, there's a moral."

"Begging your pardon, sir," Sanders added. "It was my fault. Not Seaman Gillies."

"Both of you," said Ralph.

Gillies gave Ralph an apologetic look and the two defaulters, chastened, were led out of the room again. Fairchild tipped back in his chair—yet another thing he would learn not to do at sea—and shook his head.

"Just like being a prefect all over again," he said.

"It is, isn't it?" said Ralph. "Only thankfully without the caning."


	4. Chapter 4

It was mid-morning when the signal came. Most of the crew were out on the main deck for Stand Easy, having a smoke or a bit of a gossip, enjoying the bright, crisp weather. They were a ragtag lot in their cobbled-together cold weather gear. Ralph was among them, though standing a little to one side so as to preserve the dignity of the captain's office. It was still cold—it could hardly be otherwise in February—but it was calm, and he had the toggles of his duffle coat open. The granite of Aberdeen scintillated under a slowly resurgent sun.

Ralph spotted the signal boat long before she came alongside. He finished one cigarette, tossing the fag end into the lapping water, and started another immediately. What on earth was taking so long? First she had to tie up. Then the signalman had to be found; in a minor inconvenience bordering on the typical, he was one of the few men not already on deck. Then the envelope had to be handed over, after a due exchange of pleasantries. Ralph forced himself to look away, as if he had not noticed the small drama playing out over the rail. As if this might not be what he had been waiting for.

Signalman Tanner approached at last, envelope in hand. He saluted, as punctiliously correct as only an ambitious grammar school boy could be.

"Signal, sir."

"Yes," said Ralph. "About time."

He took the envelope and ripped it open.

 _Being in all respects ready for sea, HMT_ Stella Maria _will sail with the 30th Anti-Submarine Striking Force, leaving Aberdeen at 1000A 2nd February 1940. Senior officer is in HMT Thamisis. Acknowledge._

By effort of will Ralph forced himself to finish smoking his second cigarette before he gave the acknowledgment to Tanner.

The next twenty-three hours were a whirlwind of final preparations: coaling, a last round of provisioning, the small things that always remained to be done on the eve of a departure no matter how thorough one might have thought to be. Ralph stopped all leave but sent Fairchild without comment on a half-necessary errand to HMS _Bacchante_ , where he might say a quick goodbye to Jeanie. When Fairchild returned, he looked rather wistful. He said nothing; Ralph did not ask.

At the appointed hour they sailed in company with the _Thamisis_ and the _Astonia_ out of Aberdeen harbour. Three trawlers, wreathed for a moment in coal smoke as they made steam to the north-east. It was the captain of _Thamisis_ who had their orders, to be signalled once they were underway, and so they were: anti-submarine patrol between Peterhead and the Shetlands, standing east of the Moray Firth. 

It was good to be at sea again after a long stretch in harbour. Ralph stood on the bridge feeling the pitch and roll of a ship, the physical buffeting of the wind against his chest. They had become so much second nature to him that he could hardly remember a time when they had been strange.

That first day on the open sea Ralph studied Fairchild's face carefully, looking for any touch of unease. Having a sub-lieutenant prone to seasickness was not the worst fate imaginable, but on a ship with only two officers it could come very close.

Fairchild lowered the binoculars from his eyes, squinting ahead towards the _Astonia_. Ralph thought he detected the faint ghost of a swallow, a bob of the Adam's apple above the neckline of Fairchild's submariner jumper. It was rough, unquestionably, but in the way that the North Sea is always rough in February.

Down on the main deck Gillies was coiling a line. A heavy sea poured over the rail; Gillies grabbed unsteadily at the bridge ladder, a look of panic in his eyes. Before the war he might never have been as far as the Isle of Wight. Seawater sloshed, rolled in quantity across the deck, ran steadily out of the scuppers once again.

"Bloody hell," said Fairchild. He frowned forward at the _Astonia_ , which was just wallowing in the trough of a wave.

"Keep her heading into the swells if you can, never let her lose steering way. That's all there is to it."

"Yes, sir," said Fairchild, sounding unconvinced.

"She's built for these seas," said Ralph, wanting to offer reassurance without appearing too obviously to do so. "She'll have been going out for years now, in all weathers. Much worse than this. A trawler has to earn her keep."

The swallow was definite that time. But Fairchild had a dogged look on his face.

Ralph carried on talking for the sake of it. "Have you ever seen a corvette underway? They roll like hell. And with that short foc'sle, they ship water in all weathers. Never dry out belowdecks. I can't imagine what the Admiralty were thinking sending them out on Atlantic convoys."

"No, sir," said Fairchild.

It was, Ralph thought, ridiculous to care so much about the well-being of a single junior officer. One should simply tell him to get on with things and then damn well trust him to do so. None of Ralph's old captains would have paid it the slightest bit of notice, which proved that the trouble was all on his own end.

"I'm going below," he said sharply. "Carry on."

For five days they combed the sea, listening with Asdic and watching the horizon until their eyes ached, but neither saw nor heard a sign of the Germans. It was only on their return trip, rounding Rattray Head, that Norris on lookout spotted a drifting smudge of smoke on the horizon. The signal in reply from _Thamisis_ had a solemn brevity: _Alter course to investigate_.

For the first time in her brief commissioned existence, Ralph ordered the _Stella Maria_ formally to action stations. Men came on deck at a scramble, pulling on life vests or wiping the sleep from their eyes. No one was left below, apart from the enginemen and stokers who could not be spared. They went aft to the depth charge racks and forward to man the Oerlikon and the pom-pom gun. Fairchild set off at a run for the latter.

Ralph allowed himself a moment of satisfaction at the efficiency of his crew. Then he raised the glasses to his eyes.

No sight of U-Boats. No word from the Asdic hut. No planes overhead. Nothing but the horizon and the two small armed trawlers to the west, tossing in the rising swells. It was past four in the afternoon; the setting sun illuminated a steely sea and piled dark grey clouds.

It was Norris, once again, who raised the alarm: "Men in the water! And a raft! Nine o'clock."

Now he could pick them out, almost due east. Flotsam floated here and there, men nearly indistinguishable from the spars. But they were there. One, miraculously, was waving.

Ralph rapped out a series of orders. "Half ahead. Coxs'n, prepare to lower the boat. Take Sanders and Hargreaves with you. And signal the others: _Survivors in the water. Lowering boat_."

He brought the _Stella Maria_ around, downwind of the men in the water. He dared not bring her in too close, but it was a struggle for the three men in the small ship's boat, rowing into the wind and the waves. Ralph watched as two of the survivors climbed from a raft into the boat. A third was lifted over the side, like a sack of laundry. Two more pulled out of the water; one could not tell whether they were alive or dead. 

Ralph shivered at the thought. The sun was sinking by the minute.

Until the boat came back alongside he stayed on the bridge, scanning the sky for a plane that might be returning. Nothing. Now the _Thamisis_ and _Astonia_ were lowering their own boats but he did not think there was anything left to rescue.

"Sub," he said into the speaking tube. "Come take the bridge. I'll be wanted below."

Down in the close fug of the mess, four men sat dripping, bedraggled and alone. One had been left up on the deck, dead when he was pulled from the water. Each of them seemed lost in their own world, though they were surrounded by _Stella Maria_ crewmen.

"What ship?" said Ralph sharply, pushing his way through the spectators. "And what happened?"

A burly man with a full ginger beard looked up, his hands wrapped already around a mug of tea.

" _Victoria_ , out of Peterhead," he said in a flat, soft voice, as though his mind were still elsewhere. "Plane came out of nowhere, barely had time to think what we were about before they opened up the machine gun. They must have torpedoed us; she broke in half and went under just like that. Bloody Huns, torpedoing a fishing boat."

"How many were you?"

"Eleven."

"You her captain?" 

The man slowly shook his head. Nothing else needed to be added.

A boy with seawater weeping from his dark lashes sat cradling a friend in one arm. The boy was shivering violently, his other arm hanging at an unnatural angle. 

"He's not dead," he insisted, to anyone who would listen. "He isn't dead."

But if not, then he was not far off. Too far for anything much to be done, apart from making him comfortable.

"Gillies," said Ralph. "Go to my cabin and pull the blankets off the bunks. Quickly. All of them."

Ralph was the closest thing the _Stella Maria_ had to a doctor. Not nearly close enough, Alec would say, but one did as needs must; it had been the same on his other ships. 

"You can let him go now," said Ralph gently. "He'll be better lying down. And then you can get these wet clothes off."

The boy nodded slowly, but his blanched hands were so tightly clenched in the fabric of his friend's jacket that Ralph had to pull each finger free one by one. It was only when he lifted the other sailor—scarcely more than a boy himself—into his own arms that he noticed the darkening of the cloth around the stomach. Blood, not water. His hands came away red with it when he laid the sailor on the nearest berth. 

Perhaps the cold of the water had slowed the bleeding. No longer. His breathing was a shallow rattle, growing fainter. Ralph could only cover the man with a blanket and give him a shot of morphine.

Setting the boy's arm was far simpler, though he wept silent tears as Ralph steadily pulled the bone back into its socket. One could not tell whether he was crying for himself or for his dying friend.

The last of the four survivors sat a little apart from the other three, holding a none-too-clean rag to his forehead and being repeatedly, doggedly sick into a dented metal bucket.

"Are you usually seasick?" asked Ralph, taking charge of the rag and lifting it away.

He exposed a superficial wound streaming freely with blood. Drops of it had mingled with the vomit in the bucket, so that one could not tell what it was that the man had been coughing up.

"Swallowed something."

"Just seawater? Oil?"

"Nae, she burns coal." He retched again. "Burned."

Ralph suspected that there had been oil about the place somewhere, kerosene for a lamp perhaps. But it was a blessing that there had been nothing in larger quantities. He'd heard tales of sailors being pulled out of the sea drenched in oil, inside and out; he hoped that he would never have to see it.

"Best to get it out," he said, "whatever it is."

It was a task stitching up the jagged wound, with the uncertain light and the rolling of the ship and the man pausing every so often to cough his guts out into the bucket. A sloppy job by Alec's standards, and even by Ralph's, but he had begun to think of Fairchild left alone on the bridge. It was more than twenty minutes since he'd come below.

Ralph startled suddenly at the sound of a mug shattering on the deck. Milky tendrils of tea rolled with the motion of the ship, trickling away into dark corners. 

The man with the ginger beard had dropped dead, a second mug of tea still in his hands, Fairchild's blanket wrapped round his shoulders.

"The sea don't want to let 'em go, sometimes," said Sanders darkly in the silence that followed.

It was only too easy to imagine the dragging depths, the curl of seaweed, waves and currents each with their own siren song. Ralph knew well enough, if Sanders didn't, that a scientific explanation lay in the delayed action of the cold. But instinctively every sailor felt that the numbing grip of the sea was something beyond mortal explanation.

"Mother of God," came a hushed voice.

That was Gillies, lingering long after his errand had been completed. 

Looking up Ralph became conscious of a half-circle of faces still looking on: his own crew, who ought to have been anywhere but. He told them off, not stinting his language; gave rapid orders for the temporary disposition of the casualties of the _Victoria_ , both alive and dead; and then went back up to the bridge.

Darkness was setting in already. All one could see between grey sea and grey sky was the dirty whitish foam of the wave tops. _Astonia_ and _Thamisis_ were lost in the gloom, the frail wreckage of the fishing boat miles behind.

"Nothing, sir." Fairchild reported without having to be asked, as matter-of-fact as one could want. "They must be long gone, back to Germany."

"Eleven on board," said Ralph. "Three survivors. It'll be two before long."

Fairchild gave him a long, steady, weary look. After bare days at sea it was already the gaze of a sailor.

"You have blood on your shirt," he said.

"Yes," said Ralph. "More of that before long as well."

***

A light dusting of frost and snow was burnishing Aberdeen's granite when, at dawn, the Stella Maria, the _Thamisis_ and the _Astonia_ edged their way back in past the antisubmarine boom. There were five men to go ashore: three in canvas shrouds, handed awkwardly over the rail—so close to port, there had been no need for a sea burial—and two who stepped shakily onto the pier dressed in ill-fitting borrowed clothes. Neither of them looked back.

Ralph had reports to write. His ratings were scrubbing the deck, inside and out, removing every stain of war. He spent a long while pondering over what he had seen and yet seemed to come to no conclusion.

Going ashore was like returning from a very long voyage, though they had been only six days at sea. Fairchild, having only just got his sea legs, stumbled over nothing. Ralph looked around at the busy world of the docks and felt himself, unaccustomedly, apart from it. There was an odd ringing in his ears.

They bent their steps by unspoken understanding towards the temporary hut that housed the Navy dock stores. Ralph was satisfied at this small sign of their closeness, though there was no reason to visit the stores other than Fairchild's girl.

Inside it felt colder inside than out, wind whistling through small gaps in the walls. Jean stood at a file cabinet leafing through a sheaf of carbon papers, a decidedly non-regulation knitted scarf wrapped twice around her neck. A mug of tea sat steaming on the top of the cabinet.

"They said you'd come in," she said quickly. "I was so glad, I was just waiting. Have you heard the news?"

"We've just—" Fairchild began.

"No," said Ralph. "What happened?"

Another WREN at the back of the office piped up, unable to wait to deliver the story: "They sunk the _Robert Bowen_ and the _Fort Royal_."

"Two days ago," said Jean. "They were at sea; it was a German air raid. Only the _Thomas Altoft_ came back."

The look in her eyes was clear enough— _thank God it wasn't you_ —but she was too well-brought-up a girl to say so. 

"They've been busy," said Fairchild.

"How many survivors?" asked Ralph.

Two trawlers out of a minesweeping group of three. An impressive score for a chance raid, he thought.

"Not many." Her voice was unsteady. "Lieutenant-Commander King is dead. And Lieutenant Clark and Lieutenant Wilson both. I don't know more than that. Everyone is talking but we're—we're not meant to ask."

"Jesus Christ," said Ralph under his breath.

That was the captain of the _Fort Royal_ and the captain and first lieutenant of the _Robert Bowen_. He'd known them all by sight, crossed paths around the docks; they had traded the odd line of banter, as one did, with the uneasy half-familiarity of men who live their lives in parallel. Until that moment when fate wrenches them out of joint for good.

"Lieutenant Wilson had just been promoted," said Jean. "A week ago. He was so proud, said he couldn't wait to tell the lads at Temple."

A memory stirred. "This was the Australian chap, wasn't it? He'd been a barrister?"

"He did his law degree at Oxford, he told me," said Fairchild. "But that was before my time. I think he was a cricketer."

That was the one, Ralph remembered him now. A sandy-haired man in his early thirties who argued points of seamanship and pub gossip with equally articulate vehemence, in an accent which was by turns Oxbridge and shockingly Australian. How odd it was to be piecing these points together after the fact. One had never cared much before. No, that was not it exactly. One had assumed one had all the time in the world to get to know them.

Now Fairchild was telling the tale of their patrol at sea, complete with waves twice the height they'd been in reality. But his account of their rescue of the survivors of the _Victoria_ was accurate enough. Jean listened raptly.

"And here I thought we'd been well into it," Fairchild concluded. "I wish we'd been nearer the action. Maybe we could have done some good."

Jean shook her head. "Just offshore, they said. It already seems naive of me but I always thought we'd be miles from the war in Aberdeen. I remember reading 'Channel Firing' in school; I never could imagine it, hearing guns across the Channel."

"You will have heard our gunnery practice, at least," said Fairchild. "I hope you did, it was loud enough on board."

"Oh, I can imagine it now," she replied sombrely.

They gazed at one another across the office desk.

"I should be going," said Ralph after a long, speaking silence which did not include him. His voice sounded gruff and masculine in his own ears.

Jean blinked at Ralph as though she'd forgot he was there. "Don't go yet, Lieutenant Lanyon. I wanted to invite you to dinner, both of you. My father said you should come to us as soon as you got back into port."

Ralph demurred, naturally, and thought Jean looked faintly relieved. It was Fairchild who grasped him by the arm—warmly, how warmly, even in the depth of winter—and insisted that he come along.

***

Old Aberdeen, with its cobbled lanes and square stone cottages, seemed a world away from the docks. There was something Presbyterian about the solid uprightness of the buildings, not an extraneous detail or a bit of frippery to mar the facades. Ralph approved of the spirit of the place.

"I keep wondering," confessed Fairchild as they walked from the bus stop, "whether I'm actually meeting her father, as it were, or whether we're just another two sailors in need of a home-cooked meal. For all I know, they could have men to dinner every week."

 _Haven't you seen the way that she looks at you?_ thought Ralph. _And if she doesn't realise how lucky she is, I certainly do._

But he did not say this.

"I have a friend—" he began, then stopped short, wondering whether this might be almost as bad.

"Hmm?" said Fairchild.

"Oh, only that a friend of a friend just sent me that sort of invitation from his family in Edinburgh. Third hand invite, if you think about it; I've never met the fellow myself, let alone his family. There's wartime for you. A few years ago, if you'd told me people would be falling over themselves for the chance to have a sailor to dinner, I'd have laughed. So would they."

"A few years ago I'd have laughed if you'd told me that I was going to be a sailor."

"There you are," said Ralph.

They walked on together in silence for a while.

"But really," continued Fairchild finally, "I do wonder if Jeanie only thinks that I'm in it for the company. That one girl and one invitation are just as good as another, if you see what I mean, when really that's the opposite of how I feel." He paused. "Sorry, I must be boring you stiff."

"Would you like my honest opinion?" said Ralph. "Whether or not, I'll give it you."

Fairchild chuckled. "Please do."

"I think you're being neurotic as hell."

"Sir?"

"You're a Navy officer in wartime, Harry Tate's or not. You're an Oxford man and as close to an architect as makes no difference. Any bloody fool could see that she's mad about you, and I don't doubt that half the girls in Aberdeen would agree with her, given the chance. So why don't you stop worrying tonight and enjoy yourself?"

"You might be right," said Fairchild.

"Of course I'm right," said Ralph. "I'm your captain, aren't I?"

He imagined that he could read, in the dark, the smile on Fairchild's face from the slight motion of his cigarette.

At one minute to seven they were on the doorstep of the house, straightening their caps and smoothing down freshly pressed uniforms.

It was Jeanie herself who answered the door. "Come through, come through," she said, ushering them into a cheerfully cluttered front room. "Dinner is just on the way but there's time for a quick drink first."

"Isn't there always?" said Ralph, accepting a proffered glass of sherry.

"Not if it's not 'Up Spirits'," said Fairchild. Now he certainly was smiling.

"You're not on duty, sub. Relax."

Fairchild offered him a salute so crisp that even the most exacting martinet at King Alfred could not have found fault with it. "Yes, sir."

Jean laughed. "The way the two of you carry on, I feel as if I'm at sea."

"All you need is a bucket of cold water thrown in your face every thirty seconds," said Fairchild. "That captures the mood right there."

A man in tweeds and a full white beard put his head around the door.

"It's time you young people came through to dinner," he said.

That meal was as domestic as Ralph had been in a long while, after six years at sea and, before that, twelve in boarding school. True, with Alec there had been that brief period of domestic bliss—the three months when he'd been living in Bridstow rather than merely visiting on shore leave—but however one sliced it one could not describe a tiny flat shared with a twenty-two-year-old medical student as "home." Perhaps that had been part of the problem.

Here it was only the four of them at a long oak table: Ralph and his sub, Dr. Mackintosh and Jeanie. No mention of a mother or siblings, only a cook bustling back and forth from the kitchen. The food was rationed, of course, but one could hardly complain about that, and there was nary a tinned sausage in sight. Mackintosh looked on with obvious affection as his daughter led the conversation, very much the lady of the house.

Odd for Ralph; not so odd, one thought, for Fairchild. Rather than being put on his guard—as one might expect on such an occasion—he was unbending moment by moment, turning into quite a different person than the proper young sublieutenant of the _Stella Maria_. He smiled easily and bantered and laughed, his gaze always half on Jeanie.

Ralph, abruptly and perversely, found that he missed the cramped little wardroom with its table always set for two.

***

Once again it was a relief to go back to sea. The weather was crisp and clear, with the sort of brilliant winter sun that one sometimes got in these latitudes. The mood on board was restive; the men smoked and talked at Stand Easy with a febrile, nervous energy, raucous enough that Ralph, attempting to maintain a facade of dignified reserve in the face of Macallister's collection of filthy jokes, was half tempted to tell them to pipe down. But after all the jokes were only a symptom. His men were dreaming of action and glory.

Yet it was no wish that conjured into being the Asdic contact that afternoon. It was the _Astonia_ that raised the alarm, her Aldis lamp seeming to stutter with the urgency of the signal. Men raced to their stations, scattering cigarettes to the waves, their dirty stories forgotten. They remembered the drill as if they were born to it. Ralph, on the bridge, felt his heart hammering in his chest and cursed the feeling as a distraction.

It was an afternoon of confused excitement; the three ships in the group finding and losing a single contact, combing back and forth across a choppy sea until their wakes crossed and recrossed. Though they profligately hammered depth charges down into the waves, not a trace of oil or debris disturbed the surface to hint that they had found their target. After a quiet hour, and then another, Ralph had to admit to himself that the U-Boat, if it had been a U-Boat, had slipped away unnoticed.

He was surprised at the bitterness of his disappointment. After standing the _Stella Maria_ down from action stations, he gave Fairchild the bridge and strolled alone to the stern of the ship. Lighting a cigarette, he squinted into the sun. Nothing but dark blue sea and the white of spray, stretching away to the horizon. The depth charge racks, reloaded after the engagement, stood silent and, for the moment, useless. Just like Ralph himself.

 _What did you expect?_ he asked himself, drawing on the cigarette. _Bagging a U-Boat and a VC on your first trip? This isn't a sea story, after all._

Having settled himself years ago to the steady and largely unromantic work of the Merchant Marine, he had not expected to find the Navy any different. He had not enlisted out of a love of war, but out of a sense of duty—which, for Ralph, was the highest value of all. He had never yet failed to do his duty, to the extent that an untested crew and his own inexperience allowed. Why, then, this discontent?

Ralph carried on asking himself that question over the coming days.

Sometimes he allowed himself to think of a book that he had given away years ago now, a book which he would never see again. He had never been able to bring himself to find another copy; he had never needed to, for the words were graven upon his memory.

_If a city or an army could be made up only of lovers and their beloved, it would be the best of all. For they would refrain from everything shameful, rivalling one another in honour; and men like these, fighting at each other's side, might almost conquer all the world._

If only one could believe it. No, that was not quite it, for he believed it only too well. If only it were a cause in which others could believe.

It seemed to him sometimes as if the ship had been meant for the two of them alone. One cabin, one wardroom, every joy and every danger divided between them without the need to question. Together they could cultivate the austere love of which Kipling had once written: _two men who tug at the same oar_. It would have been a dream if it had not been wartime; if his beloved had ever gazed at him with anything other than the impersonal admiration and loyalty that was due an efficient Navy officer.

He should have been that officer. Instead he was nothing but aching flesh and blood. He woke every morning saturated with longing, turning awkwardly under the reproachful, penitential itch of the Navy-issue blankets. It was continually and inescapably damp on a trawler—not as it would have been on a corvette, but damp nonetheless—so that one lay awake and chilled to the bone, dreaming of holding the human warmth of a lover in one's arms.

He thought hopelessly of Alec, of Odell, of anyone he could bring to mind. Hazell, even, more than once. It did no good whatsoever to be proud at a time like this. So Ralph told himself even as his mind slipped back to his sub, dragging its anchor with the inexorable pull of the tide.

He thought of Fairchild above on the bridge, grasping the rail with those fine hands, already chapped by cold and salt water. He imagined warming them against his chest, unbuttoning clothes, leaning forward to kiss him...

After that Ralph's reflections became considerably less edifying and considerably more expedient, but he was at heart (so he told himself) a practical man and at a time like this it was all about what did the job.

He shook himself and sat up, running a hand through his hair. Well, that was that. Enough. He had a ship to command.

***

Only that was not that. Of course not. 

Later that day he and Fairchild were together on the bridge when Sylvester came to inform them that Sanders and Gillies had been found together _in flagrante_.

" _In flagrante delicto_." He actually used the phrase, as though proud to be able to put a Latin tag on it. "In the forrard lifeboat, Macallister found 'em going at it, begging your pardon sir. Gillies was buggering Sanders, he says, and they...."

" _Gillies_ was.... No, never mind. Thank you, Sylvester, that will be all."

No sign of movement on the part of the coxs'n.

"I said," Ralph repeated, more firmly, "that will be all."

After the second dismissal Sylvester went, clearly disappointed at being balked of the chance to retail further second-hand details. The man was regular Navy and had served on battleships for years; one couldn't imagine that this would be the first time he'd encountered such a situation.

"Hell," said Ralph.

Fairchild raised a questioning eyebrow. "Sir?"

After a moment he realised that Fairchild was hoping for enlightenment. What ought a commanding officer to do under the circumstances? He was up for learning this, just as he would have been up for learning how to tie a double sheet bend or how to fill in an official report. He confidently expected Ralph to do the right thing. Whatever that was. Ralph felt faintly sick.

"I bloody well wish that had stayed as gossip, where it belonged," he said wearily. "Now I shall have to take official notice. I could have them brought up at court-martial if I liked."

A shocked, indrawn breath from Fairchild. "You wouldn't. Surely."

"Wouldn't I?"

A week ago if Ralph had been asked to consider the notion—by Alec, perhaps—he would have disclaimed any attachment to the harsher forms of naval discipline. Having been six years in the Merchant Marine, he had served aboard ships where sodomy had been variously considered a minor vice, a necessary evil, or (on the larger passenger liners) an openly tolerated fact of life. There had been ships where a sailor would have been given hell after being caught in the act, by his shipmates if not the captain, but in general one found far more tolerance at sea than one could ever expect on land.

His remark about courts-martial had been more a reflection upon his own powers as captain than anything else, but he had been stung by Fairchild's reaction. Ralph had begun his command in the role of the martinet; now he was being hung with his own rope.

"Naturally you'll do whatever you think best, sir," Fairchild said, backing away from the previous hint of insubordination.

"Naturally," said Ralph. "But...?"

"But, well, respectfully sir, I think perhaps men like that deserve pity more than anything else."

"I don't. Not a bit." 

Those five words, lashing like whip-strokes, had been directed entirely at himself; Sanders and Gillies had simply been caught in the crossfire. But Fairchild was not to know. 

He stared at Ralph in disbelief. "No?"

"What if it had been you fucking Jeanie Mackintosh inside that lifeboat? What should I have done then, Sub-Lieutenant Fairchild?"

It was an utterly inexcusable thing to have said; Ralph knew it before the words were out of his mouth. If only Fairchild would hit him. It was the obvious conclusion. A punishment, a relief, an end to the charade. No more than he deserved.

The resulting fight would most likely see them both hauled up before a shore tribunal: two R.N.V.R. officers caught scrapping on the bridge of their trawler in broad daylight, both dead sober. It would confirm everything that the regular Navy thought about the Wavy Navy. People would say that there was a woman involved and they would not be far off. Ralph would lose his command, be shunted off to some humiliatingly menial assignment. He would never have to see Fairchild again.

All this passed through Ralph's mind in the space of a heartbeat and yet none of it came to pass. Fairchild only stood staunchly in place, one hand resting for balance on the binnacle, colouring to the roots of his hair.

"The same thing," he said. "Whatever you thought right and appropriate under the circumstances. Lieutenant Lanyon."

It would not have been the same; Ralph knew that full well. If in some moment of madness Fairchild had been taken _in flagrante_ in a lifeboat, the whole crew would doubtless have been slapping him on the back for weeks. For one reason among others: it had become painfully obvious by now that his sub was a virgin.

"The point," said Ralph, "is that any man incapable of controlling himself can damn well get off my ship."

"Yes, sir," said Fairchild with reproachfully crisp correctness. "Of course. I shall see that they're brought up at captain's defaulters tomorrow."

"Thank you. That's all."

Defaulters was a grim ritual. The two officers on one side of the wardroom table, Sanders and Gillies standing together on the other, not too close and yet not that far apart either. The coxswain related the charges with indecent relish.

Ralph questioned the one witness carefully; then, individually, after reading them each the warning, the two accused. No lawyer and no judge, he had his task made considerably easier by the fact that Sanders, speaking slowly, half tongue-tied, admitted their crime.

"Of course I know we shouldn't have," he said finally. "But find me a man in the Navy who goes to sea and only does what he ought."

"This is a very serious charge," said Ralph. "It's not as though you had been caught gambling."

"I know that, sir," said Sanders.

"Did you enter into it willingly?"

"Yes, sir."

When asked, Gillies said the same. His face was very pink and yet he looked years more mature than when he had come aboard. In his small voice there could have been a note of pride.

Going by the book, in order to corroborate these statements, Ralph should have ordered a full medical examination for both of the men. And performed it as well, for who else was there aboard ship to do so? This he would not do. Perhaps it was small clemency, but this, it seemed, was where irreproachable correctness finally gave way to human feeling. Even if the feelings he was protecting were his own. He shook his head and had the coxswain escort the two men out of the wardroom.

On the following day he sentenced Sanders and Gillies to a fortnight's detention ashore, once the Stella Maria had returned to port. They accepted their doom stoically enough; it was not for Ralph, as the captain, to inquire further. He and Fairchild never discussed the topic again.

 _Men like that deserve pity._ It kept ringing in his ears. Thankfully a bottle of gin offered nothing in the way of pity; he drank that night until the memory of Fairchild's plea for mercy went away. Ralph wanted none. He deserved none.


	5. Chapter 5

It was in the light of a cracking hangover that Ralph decided the situation with Fairchild had become intolerable. He sat at the wardroom table trying to read through the latest Admiralty circulars while Fairchild sat at the other end tucking into a hearty breakfast, and wondered whether he had stumbled into his own personal circle of hell.

It could have been a cozy domestic scene, with the ship rocking at anchor and sunlight reflecting in small dapples onto the overhead. Fairchild was absorbed in _The Times_ , licking his finger as he did with each turn of the page. Somewhere above Tanner was whistling as he worked—one could tell it was Tanner by the peculiar tuneless quality of his whistle, which Ralph always associated with the rattling _ping_ of the Asdic. All of that had to be reckoned on one side.

On the other side came his pounding headache, which was not improved by the incessant thumping of coal being loaded at speed into the bunkers. More intangible was the feeling of guilt and the conviction that that Fairchild, on an informal basis at least, was still not speaking to him. 

A captain was not meant to be friends with his crew. A captain was meant to exist in a state of awesome and august self-sufficiency. Only a fool or a man utterly without experience in the ways of the sea would have contested the fact. And now, instead of the cordial efficiency of a well-conducted wardroom, they had this awkward silence, which expected intimacy while offering none. 

Instead of keeping his distance from the start, as he'd intended, he had submitted to his own loneliness, his own desire for admiration and hero-worship, his own longing for a true friend who could offer understanding. The sin of Sanders and Gillies, if it was a sin at all, had been a minor one by contrast. Ralph was, after all, the captain; Ralph had buggered things up for good, and, unlike Gillies, without the involvement of a lifeboat. He could not think that there was any way of escaping it, other than ways which he would not allow himself to consider.

The latest Admiralty circular only made things worse. Printed in black-and-white, with the helpful endorsement of a royal crest, it informed Lieutenant R. R. Lanyon (R.N.V.R.) that he could apply for the automatic promotion of any Sub-Lieutenant under his command who had put in three months of sea time. It would have been something to look forward to, were it not for the fact that one's sub was required to have reached the advanced age of twenty-eight.

Ralph himself would not turn twenty-six for another two months. The war would probably be over, and one or the other or both of them dead, by the time that Fairchild turned twenty-eight.

It had been a cruel hope: Fairchild promoted in glory, sent off to be one of a whole host of Lieutenants onboard a battleship, where he could learn the trade properly. There would have been congratulations and good wishes, not a trace of reproach. Ralph could have faded decently into the background, to be remembered with the vague fondness with which one thinks of a first captain of brief standing. The _Stella Maria_ would have had a new sub, with whom Ralph could start on a new footing. Perhaps he would have a squint. Or boils.

"Very sad unfinished story about rising smoke," said Fairchild, _apropos_ of nothing.

"Pardon?"

Looking up from his unfinished crossword puzzle, pencil poised against his lips, Fairchild repeated the clue. "Eight letters," he added.

"No bloody idea." Ralph paused. "Look, I'm going ashore, I want to see someone at the station. Go up and supervise the coaling, will you, it'll be a damn sight more useful than finishing the _Times_ crossword."

"Right away, sir." Fairchild promptly stood, then paused for a moment. Without warning he smiled, a gap-toothed smile that suffused the small wardroom with warmth. " _Tragical_. That's what it was. Eight letters."

"Go," said Ralph.

***

"Promotion?" said the old captain, frowning at Ralph across his desk.

"Yes, sir. I'm aware that it specified twenty-eight years in the circular but I wondered whether something might be done. He's a very promising young officer."

Outside the window of the Station Hotel, now the 'stone frigate' _HMS Bacchante_ , one could see both the railway station and the port. It might have been a glorious view on a clear day, but the clouds had just rolled in and were gathering close overhead. Steam from the trains mixed with smoke from the small ships that constantly came and went. Down on the street umbrellas were unfurling as it began to rain.

The captain, who was Chief Staff Officer, had a full, yellowed beard and a pipe upon which he puffed thoughtfully as he considered the request.

"Twenty-three years old, you said. Sea time of... what, a few weeks? I assume the young man in question hasn't been mentioned in despatches or anything along those lines."

A sinking feeling. "No, sir." 

"Perhaps you'll say the thought doesn't follow, Lieutenant Lanyon, but nonetheless: have you any complaint against Sublieutenant Fairchild? Some reason you'd prefer to have him quietly transferred off your ship? If it's a matter of personality, just between you and me..."

His fondness for crosswords and the way he smiled. His eagerness to do the right thing. The way that he always thought the best of his captain, even when Ralph deserved nothing better than contempt. All that confidence and faith, which Ralph could not bear to see rubbed out in the confusion and disillusionment of battle. 

None of it could be put into words, not in a way which would make any sense to an old Navy man who had probably served at the Battle of Jutland.

"I can't think of a man I like better," said Ralph.

"Without prejudice to the young man concerned, you understand."

"No. It really isn't that, sir, though I can understand why you might think so. I think he has more to learn than I can teach him, that's all; it's a matter of giving him a fighting chance to make something of himself before the war catches him up."

The old captain sighed and began to clean out his pipe.

"All of us have something to learn, Lieutenant Lanyon, all of us. Like it or not, I dare say that war is the best teacher. Come back in six months, if you still feel that something needs doing."

_If you're still around. If any of us are around. If Aberdeen is still standing._

"Of course, sir. Thank you for seeing me."

In response Ralph earned a distracted nod. 

"Yes, very well. You can see yourself out. This bloody humidity, plays havoc with the tobacco...."

***

The coaling was done by the time Ralph returned to the ship. He found Fairchild on deck supervising the loading of supplies, as well as casting an eye over a wet and bedraggled working party which was swabbing the deck with a finely honed air of superfluity.

"What are you doing out in the rain?" said Ralph, returning a salute which felt rather more than required.

"Your orders, sir. After the coaling there was all of this."

He gestured vaguely around him. Only on a ship of this size, thought Ralph, could a first lieutenant be under the delusion that he could supervise every activity personally. Or that the captain would want him to.

"No need to be fundamentalist about it, sub."

Fairchild ignored the comment and fell into step with Ralph as he paced the deck. "We had a signal from the _Thamisis_ , sir."

He produced an envelope from inside his coat, only slightly damp with raindrops. It was still warm with his body heat as Ralph took it in hand.

Ralph ripped it open, read it quickly, and found the message exactly as expected. "Eighteen hundred. Will we be ready to sail?"

"Earlier than that. Give me forty minutes and we'll be all ship-shape."

Ralph laughed. "We don't want to leave the rest of the strike group behind. But good work."

He paused and looked up at the sky from the shelter of the open wheelhouse door. The clouds were lower and darker than ever and they were scudding past the masts in the harbour as if they, too, had an important rendezvous to make. He'd thought it was just a squall, but the wind was picking up already, and the glass was still falling.

"We're in for a storm," he added.

That evening the three trawlers made their way out of harbour into waves that were growing higher by the minute, pounding over the breakwater in sprays of foam. Astern, Aberdeen was almost lost in gloom, but the sun shone through a break in the clouds, illuminating the _Stella Maria_ as if in a spotlight. It had lit the sea to an unearthly shade of bottle-green, dark except when it shone through the waves' translucent crests.

Ralph stayed on the bridge until the little group had made its way safely through the swept channel and out into the open sea. Then he went below and lay down, still in his uniform. If he had been at shore he would never have been able to fall asleep at eight in the evening, but at sea things were different. He knew that he would be grateful for sleep before too long.

A couple hours later he was woken by the motion of the ship, a violent pitching. Outside the window there was nothing but dark and blowing spray but one did not have to see to tell that the weather had set in. If he'd been still a second mate he would have thought nothing of it, simply turned over, braced himself against the roll and gone back to sleep. No doubt the regular Navy men among his crew would be swinging soundly in their hammocks.

But he was not in the Merchant Marine any more and not a second mate. He was a captain, with a green sublieutenant keeping watch on the bridge, alone in the night. 

Ralph rolled out of his berth. He snugged his cap on his head and went above.

It was the coxs'n who greeted him, sitting companionably with a cup of cocoa as if he rode a trawler through a storm on every night of the year. He did not look at all surprised to see Ralph.

"Lookouts are having a difficult time of it, sir," he said simply. "We've moved off a bit. Still."

From the bridge the view appeared unchanged: a pitch-black winter night, spray obscuring all but the faintest suggestion of the looming waves that surrounded the _Stella Maria_. Of the other two trawlers there was no immediate sign. Nonetheless they were out there somewhere, blacked-out and invisible as they fought through the weather.

Having worked his way up from an ordinary sailor Ralph could imagine just what it was like for the lookouts on deck: holding tight to the rail, drenched by the waves and cut by the wind, straining their stinging eyes into the unremitting blackness. Four hours' watch were an eternity under such conditions.

"I imagine we'll have the signal to scatter before long," he said, wondering whether the captain of the _Thamesis_ was himself awake and making his own calculations. "The Germans will be riding it out themselves."

War seemed abruptly a ridiculous conceit on such a night. The sea cared nothing for allegiances and nothing for boundaries. For the duration of the storm every man out on the North Sea would be simply another sailor, caring only to endure.

He turned away from the coxs'n. "Sub?"

Fairchild startled as though he'd just woken from one nightmare into another. 

"It's very bad," he said.

Bad enough, at least. Ralph could barely make out Fairchild's white face in the dim light of the compass; by day he would have looked terrified, or ill, or both at once. But he had his hands to the wheel, metaphorically at least, and for two hours he had been guiding the ship through the night, however inexpertly. The surge of pride that Ralph felt was mixed with that absurd protectiveness, bitching everything up again.

"Go below," Ralph said. For that he earned another startled look. Suddenly he could make out the lines of strain around Fairchild's face. "No, you've done fine. But you oughtn't to have to carry on doing it all night, not on a night like this."

"It's a storm and no mistake," put in the coxs'n helpfully. "Captain'll want to be at the wheel himself."

"Sir," said Fairchild. "Thank you, sir. I will."

He got slowly to his feet, stumbled as the roll of the ship threw him towards the far wall, and then clattered with surprising speed down the ladder. A moment later one could make him out on the deck below, clinging to the rail as he was sick over the side. That took fortitude in itself; the seas were coming over the rail with heavy regularity and he would be going down to his cabin soaked to the skin as well as seasick.

"How many times has that happened?" asked Ralph.

"Only once in two hours. Not bad, considering. That's what I said, said it happens to all of us, but he didn't seem to think much of it. And I don't think he'd appreciate me telling you all this, begging your pardon, sir."

"Don't worry. I shan't pass it on."

Ralph settled himself at the wheel. It was odd to be at the wheel once again, and on such a small ship. Even with the help of steam steering gear (a recent addition, one suspected) it took a firm grip to hold her to her course.

The coxs'n continued: " _Call the captain_ , I says, _he won't think badly of you_. Only he wouldn't have it. Not but what he didn't do well for himself, sick as he was."

"Yes," said Ralph, abstracted.

"Shall I stamp for a cup of kye, sir?"

"Please do."

The order to scatter came just before midnight, when Ralph was drinking a second cup of the stuff in the hopes that it would settle his own stomach. _Thank heavens for wireless_ , he thought. In the days when ships had relied on signal flags it would have been as if they were entirely alone on the wide sea. Even with Aldis lamps it would have been difficult to see amid the spray and the crests of the waves.

He steered her to the north east, into the waves and the wind, the latter strong enough that they were barely making headway.

When the coxs'n went off watch, Ralph told him to go below and speak to Fairchild.

"Tell him I don't want to see him until morning. There's no point in it. Send him back to bed."

"Very good, sir, I'll pass it along."

With a touch of the paranoia that chases one in the early hours of the morning, Ralph wondered whether that was a knowing look on the man's face. But there was no point in wondering and there would never be any answer. Sylvester went below and was replaced by Norris, who was a good, steady sailor and settled into his place without any unnecessary conversation. The night wore on.

It was far from being the first all-night watch that Ralph had stood. Tramp freighters with the captain drunk and incapable; a passenger liner steaming peacefully across the north Atlantic with five hundred souls on board, all of them unconscious of the fact that her first mate was halfway across the sea, in a Halifax hospital with a bad case of influenza. If he'd been the captain of a fishing trawler he would have worked through all hours hauling herring or cod. 

But tonight there were no fish to be caught, no passengers, no Germans, no captain sleeping below, no other ships within miles. Ralph had sole charge of this painfully small ship, and the twenty-two souls in her, with no destination nor immediate cause save her presence here on the wide and pitiless sea.

He liked it, then thought that he ought not to like it, and finally became grateful for the fatigue that soon made every question other than the immediate seem impossibly distant. Sleeplessness always brought with it a narrowing of vision, till all that seemed to exist in the universe was the compass and wheel and the darkness outside. 

No dawn ever felt as slow in coming, though it was March and dawn was already earlier than seven o'clock. Gazing east into the horizon, Ralph could make out the dark outlines of broken clouds, the sky between shading slowly from royal blue till finally the colours came back into the world. It was morning, and the crew of the _Stella Maria_ looked around to find themselves still in one piece. 

Cook arrived on the bridge before Fairchild did, staunchly carrying yet more cocoa and a sausage roll. Ralph took one look at it and his stomach turned over.

"Yes, thanks," he said, quickly looking away. "Maybe not now."

"I'll have it if you won't, cap'n," offered Norris with a fine spirit of generosity.

As it would have seemed unreasonable to refuse a matelot his breakfast, Ralph spent the next ten minutes attempting to ignore the scent of hot sausage and the sound of enthusiastic eating. By the time that Fairchild appeared five minutes later, all that was left were the crumbs. Norris licked his big palm appreciatively.

The freshly pressed uniform that Fairchild wore only threw the miserable whiteness of his face into stark relief. Obviously he'd done what he could to pull himself together, though any sensible man would not have bothered to change clothes and shave in the midst of a gale. He stood now to one side of the bridge, steadying himself with both hands against the roll of the ship, swallowing hard.

"It's got worse," he said, looking forward as the bow of the ship plunged into an oncoming wave. For a moment the spray blotted out all vision, lit by a sudden break of sun.

"It has," said Ralph. "Have you seen the glass?"

Fairchild peered at the barometer, his eyes faintly unfocused. It had bottomed out a little after midnight and since then had been rising rapidly.

"Strong wind," Ralph added, "but then you could probably tell that."

"A gale?" guessed Fairchild, with the landsman's initial imprecision. "More? Force ten?"

"I should say so. Look at that foam."

Together they gazed out at the chaos of the North Sea in a full gale. Waves as high as the ship itself stretched away to the horizon, seeming to shift and tilt crazily as the _Stella Maria_ rode them. Foam blew in the air, gathering on the sea in confused patches. Above the horizon, clouds piled in equal confusion, rank upon serried rank in shades of white and brown and grey.

"I'm sorry, sir," Fairchild began. "I've been—it's inexcusable, I know—"

"Not at all. It happens to everyone eventually."

"You've been on watch all night," Fairchild insisted.

"To everyone," said Ralph firmly, praying only that his own queasiness should not catch up with him while his sub was still on the bridge. It was the smallness of the ship, he thought; he'd grown unused to the motion.

Fairchild was silent for a long while.

"I can take my watch, sir," he said finally. "If you'll let me. You should sleep."

"If we were trawling for herring, how much sleep do you think I'd be getting? A damn sight less than this. There's no need for you to be up, there's nothing stirring here but the weather. Go below, eat something if you can keep it down. I'll call you when I want you."

There was nothing that morning but the monotony of storm and spray. Ralph was sick once, into a bucket which the coxs'n emptied without comment. He ate a corned beef sandwich and felt slightly better. The waves made no judgment, simply rolled onwards.

It was only in the late afternoon that Ralph allowed Fairchild to take the watch—but not the helm, that was the coxs'n—while he went for a brief, blessed hour of sleep below. One would think that it would be difficult to sleep under such circumstances, but after so many hours at the wheel, even a moment of inattention was enough to set a man dropping off. He slept his space and, when the knock on the door came, went back above feeling what might pass for refreshed.

He was glad, later, that he was on the watch and at the wheel when it happened. Not that it made any difference; there was no blame to be apportioned, nothing that could have been done to avoid it. 

There was nothing but the sea, a wave higher by far than any of the others, looming suddenly into the darkening sky. 

It took the _Stella Maria_ on her starboard quarter, rolling her onto her beam ends. For a moment there was nothing to be seen through the window of the wheelhouse but the terrible confusion of masses of water thrown against the glass.

The whole ship shuddered under the impact, with a tortured groaning of metal and wood. Something had broken loose; he could feel that even if he could not see, even if all his mind and body belonged only to holding the wheel. _As if his life depended on it_ , one might say; not only his, but of all those souls under his command.

A moment later the _Stella Maria_ righted herself, shaking off the impact. Ralph said a brief prayer of thanks, whether to God or his sturdy ship he was not sure. He still had the wheel and the trawler was still afloat, riding through seas which now seemed far short of the worst that the North Sea could offer.

Across the wheelhouse Norris was struggling to his feet. Ralph felt suddenly grateful that he'd ordered the lookouts in hours earlier.

"All right?"

"Better before," said Norris. He gingerly felt his ribs and seemed satisfied with the result.

Ralph noted at the back of his mind that she was not answering the helm quite as smoothly as she ought—though in the midst of a storm, even with the latest steam steering gear, the difference between easy and difficult was not so simple to discern.

"Damage report. Fetch the sub and the coxs'n if they haven't started on it already."

In the dim light, with spray still sluicing down the window, it was difficult to make out the forward deck. Ralph had a suspicion, though, that all was not as it should be.

"Scratch that," he added. "Take the wheel. Just now."

Norris obeyed without complaint. Ralph went forward onto the open bridge, out into the battering wind and spray, forcing the door closed behind him. Now he could see more clearly the punishment the ship had taken: the once tidily-scrubbed deck was in chaos, pulverised wood and tangles of rigging. The Asdic hut, which had been added on to the ship during her time at Lowestoft (stoutly, so one had believed), was gone. The wireless mast had gone with it.

Ralph whistled, impressed; the sound of it was torn away by the wind.

Ten minutes later his damage control team made their report, the sub and the coxs'n together. Perhaps the need for action had concentrated Fairchild's mind because he looked, ironically, less terrified than before, a man who has learned his role and matches the challenge because there is nothing else to be done.

"Not a leak," said the coxswain first of all. "Hull's intact, she's a good ship."

"Thank God for that," said Ralph.

"All the men are fine," Fairchild said. "Just a few bruises, nothing that needs seeing to. The Aldis hut... well, really there's not a trace of it, you'll have seen for yourself. It's taken the wireless mast and a few bits and bobs. We've lost two depth charges off the rack but that's held up better; it was mostly the bow that took the brunt of the wave, I think. The pom-pom and the Oerlikon are intact, though heaven knows if they'll fire."

"Engineer's had a look at the rudder, best he could. Thinks it's out of true. But that's the worst of it, sir. It could... well."

_It could have been much worse. It could have been all up._

No need to say it out. Ralph nodded.

"Lifeboats are still there," Fairchild added. "I suppose that's something. It's chaos belowdecks, though. There isn't a book left on the shelves in the wardroom; and you should hear the cook."

"I'd rather not." Ralph paused. "Can we stay out?"

"Not much point, I should say," said the coxswain.

"Agreed."

Ralph now had a decision to make. With no wireless and no other ships within visual range, there could be no orders. No one knew where they were; the _Stella Maria_ might have been sunk beneath the waves. The choice was his alone.

He thought for a moment: the distance of Aberdeen, his battered ship, another night and day in the storm with no way of knowing what might be coming their way.

"We'll go to Scapa as soon as we can manage it," he said.

The coxswain nodded approvingly, in the manner of a man who has been thinking one step ahead. But Fairchild's expression was one of pure admiration, as though he thought Ralph a captain like unto a God, capable of creating a safe harbour out of the watery formlessness of the void. Or perhaps that was Ralph's imagination.

"Plot a course, sub," he added. "It'll have to be dead reckoning. Perhaps we'll get a sight tomorrow morning."

"Yes, sir." Fairchild paused. "I'll have to sort out the charts first, they're all over the floor as well."

"Get on with it, then," said Ralph. "I think she's ready for port. As it happens, so am I."

As he turned to go, clutching at the back wall for support, Fairchild gave Ralph a smile.


	6. Chapter 6

Scapa Flow was as wild a place as one could imagine in Britain, a natural harbour nestled between the islands of the Orkneys. The _Stella Maria_ limped her way in past the anti-submarine booms as the men on the drifters gave casual waves of welcome. Just another trawler, hardly worthy of notice. Before them, spread out in the broad natural harbour, rode the pride and strength of the Royal Navy, the Home Fleet returned to Scapa Flow from its temporary base at Rosyth. Absent was the _Royal Oak_ , which had been sunk in place by a German U-boat back in October.

"Impossible to believe that they got through," said Fairchild, scanning the scene through glasses. "And then got home again! It's the sort of thing one would read about in the _Boys' Own Paper_."

"Defences weren't finished, it's the only explanation. But they damn well better be now. Look at all those ships."

Here in the remote Orkneys, the harbour was as busy as New York or Hong Kong. Ralph broke off, not for silent contemplation, but to shout orders below as yet another drifter crossed their course. The _Stella Maria_ still was not answering her helm as he would have liked. It was a relief when a small tug—not so much smaller than the trawler—came alongside to guide them to their destination.

"I saw the _Hood_ once in Singapore," Ralph reminisced. "They used to take her out to show the flag, nothing could have been grander. This would have been back in the early thirties. I was there on a tramp steamer out of Penang, I've never seen a filthier ship, but I was still an A.B. then and had to take what I could get. You can't imagine what a different world the Royal Navy seemed."

"I think I can," said Fairchild.

The worst of it was that Ralph knew what he meant without even having to ask. He looked down at the deck where his ragtag crew of fishermen and landsmen leaned on the rail and gaped at the scene about them. Some had likely never traveled much beyond their own home ports while the others had likely never been to sea at all. In their handknitted jerseys and battered caps, they were a far cry from the drilled and disciplined Royal Navy sailors who took a moment from their duties to glance so disdainfully down from their destroyers and their battleships.

Ralph remembered when he had first gone to sea, that long ago summer. An old, rusty trawler had seemed a whole world to him, and her captain like unto a God. Now his smallness in the scheme of the war was brought suddenly home to him; he was ashamed to feel that it mattered to him. It should not have done.

"I suppose there's a reason why they call it Harry Tate's navy," he said, lighting a cigarette.

"Perhaps you've served on better ships," said Fairchild. "I'm sure you have. But they're a good crew in their way. The men have worked hard; they show willing. I don't think they'll disappoint you when we do see action. We'll make something of her yet, whatever the proper Navy might say. You might even remember her fondly someday, if the wind's in the right direction."

Ralph could not say all the things that he would remember fondly about the _Stella Maria_. He realised that he had touched Fairchild's professional pride; his sub had spent many hard hours amongst the gun crew and the depth charges, trying to weld a collection of heterogenous men into a working team. How they would do in action—real action, not the chasing of phantoms—no one could say. For all his sea days, Ralph had never experienced it himself. But he had a feeling that Fairchild was right; they would rise to the challenge.

"You have a right to know this," said Ralph finally, watching skuas wheeling overhead. "Back in Aberdeen, when I went to the station, I was trying to get you promoted off the ship."

Fairchild began to protest; Ralph carried on. From the old captain he had learned the first thing that needed saying.

"Not because you're not a good officer; precisely the opposite, in fact. You've been the best thing that's happened to this ship." Perhaps that was going too far. No matter. "But I'm not regular Navy and neither is the _Stella Maria_. If you're going to be in for the duration, you deserve more than you can get here, more than I can give you. You'll be a fine officer, given the chance. You are already."

Fairchild readied another protest. The tug by their side was chugging smoothly onward, water swirling in her wake.

"They turned down the promotion because you were too young," Ralph concluded. "I just wanted you to know the score. I won't forget about it; that's a promise."

"They didn't teach us much about small ships at _King Alfred_ , did they?"

"No; they didn't."

A long silence.

"I wouldn't have taken it, sir," said Fairchild. "I don't want to be anywhere else."

The wind was ruffling his light brown hair. The sun was shining but a sudden swirl of flurries had begun to fall, veiling the distant ships. Snowflakes settled on the upturned collar of his duffle coat. Ralph looked away.

***

Even once their battered ship was at anchor there was no rest for Ralph. While his sublieutenant was filling in Admiralty damage report forms in triplicate, there was an unfamiliar shipyard to negotiate—bustling with men, none of whom knew him from Adam—and repairs to be arranged. By the time that sunset was spreading over the Orkneys, his ship was no longer his own, and the sound of welding and hammering had begun to echo over the suddenly still waters.

That evening the two of them were ferried ashore by a drifter. They were accompanied by half of the crew, who sat discreetly apart in the bow, making their own plans for this unexpected shore leave.

"I don't suppose there's a decent place to get a drink around here," said Ralph to the skipper of the little requisitioned fishing ship, a rough-hewn man in his sixties who wore the wrinkled uniform of an R.N.R. sublieutenant.

"Nowhere but Lyness," the skipper said. "It's all Navy: cinema, theatre, canteen, all of it, and you get your beer by a ticket. There must have been bugger all here before, I can tell you. And if you're hoping for women you can stop right now; can't be had at H.M.S. Proper Swine for love or money, as they say. We've Wrens by the dozen but they're not meant to fraternise. So they tell us."

Fairchild laughed. "I shall write and tell Jeannie. She'll be pleased to hear it."

Then he cast Ralph a slightly concerned look. Ralph, who had often been at sea for months at a time without even a promise of women, felt himself utterly unmoved by the news. What struck him more was that his sublieutenant seemed to have classed him as the type of man who wants a girl in every port, and cannot consider himself satisfied without.

"She won't be pleased to hear how long we'll be in port," he said, tactfully changing the subject. "They say it'll be a fortnight at least."

"One would far rather be at sea, if one's to be away at all." Fairchild shook his head. "But I suppose it can't be helped."

Ralph turned back to the skipper. "It's not even the repairs; they've got started on those straightaway. But wouldn't you know, she's got properly coked up already, so all the boilers need scraping down on top of that. It didn't do us a damn bit of good in the storm. She was barely making headway."

The skipper whistled sympathetically. "You think they'd learn you can't put a two-pounder on a dinghy and call her a battleship. If that's the best those buggers in the Admiralty can do, well, you might as well spend the duration in Scapa Flow, with a boom for the submarines and an ack-ack for the sky. That's what I tell myself. Not but what the booms did much good in the event either."

Ralph caught his sublieutenant's eye. A slight nod; Fairchild said nothing, only thoughtfully lit a cigarette. They understood one another when it came to these things at least.

Lyness had perhaps once been a village, but if so it had long ago been swallowed up in the demands of wartime. Sprawling over the bare, scarred Orkney turf—turned now largely to mud—was a military encampment the size of a small town, low and dreary prefabricated huts interspersed with looming oil tanks serving the thirsty ships of the Home Fleet. Sea birds circled mockingly overhead while above it all stretched a wastefully spectacular sunset, burning red and gold into the clear air.

To Ralph the whole thing looked rather like an Army camp. It wasn't his usual sort of port, not at all.

Nonetheless the officers' mess was just about all that one could ask under the circumstances: namely it was warm and dry with drink flowing in abundance. It was also jam packed with officers. Ralph had not seen so much gold braid since King Alfred's. Most of the stripes, granted, came in ones and twos—junior officers like himself and Fairchild—but a good few of them wore the solid braid of the Royal Navy.

Beer was the drink of choice. Pints ordered for himself and Fairchild, Ralph settled down to the long yet somewhat comforting business of getting drunk. He started to feel it sooner than he was expecting; he was tired enough that he was three pints in before it occurred to him that really he ought to have been in his bunk. But it was too late for that now. There was nothing to do but press on.

Around them, men were talking about Finland, the _Altmark_ incident, the state of tinned sausages and the price of beer. Ralph and his sublieutenant held up a quiet corner of the bar, drinking in a wearily companionable way. They might as well, Ralph thought, have been back in the wardroom of the _Stella Maria_ with pink gins. That was about the fourth pint.

In an attempt to compensate he started talking shop with the Lieutenant next to him, a stocky blond chap with R.N. stripes who was in his early thirties and looked as though he'd seen it all before. Fairchild leaned across Ralph to catch the conversation, his shoulder against Ralph's arm so that the two uniforms seemed to blur together. After an obligatory discussion of the weather they fell into telling sea stories with very little preamble. 

Ralph unfolded a tale or two from his merchant marine days, which were already beginning to seem oddly remote. The Lieutenant countered, rather magnificently, with an account of the _Hood_ 's notorious Gibraltar cruise in '35 (when surely he could not have been more than a midshipman): the collision with the _Renown_ while on exercises and the consequent, much-publicised court-martial. He concluded with some vehemence that his captain had not been at fault—which the board had agreed—and in recognition of this fact allowed Fairchild to buy the next round.

"But which is your ship?" the Lieutenant asked, taking a last swallow of his rather watery pint. "You said you'd just come in, were you with our lot?"

'Our lot' were, presumably, the group that had just come into Scapa Flow: alongside the _Hood_ , the battleship _Valiant_ and a brace of destroyers.

Fairchild put the money down on the counter. "The _Stella Maria_ ," he said, before Ralph could step in with an answer that would have made more sense. "She's a trawler," he added.

The Lieutenant's whole attitude changed. "Oh, minesweeper. Right."

He looked around lazily as if wondering whether there were anything more interesting in the vicinity.

"Antisubmarine trawler," said Ralph.

"Not much difference."

"There is to us," said Fairchild, leaning still further across Ralph to the point of risking an upset. "You haven't the first idea what you're talking about."

It was at this point Ralph remembered that his sublieutenant felt his drink more than Ralph himself did.

"Better you than me; I wouldn't see it. But then I'm not only in it for the duration."

"Go to hell," said Fairchild.

 _That deteriorated quickly_ , thought Ralph, a faintly detached feeling that made him feel he'd better watch himself. He started to stand a moment after they did, registering this all in a moment as adrenalin began to flow.

"Look here," he began, "we don't want a fight."

"Tell it to the Germans."

Ralph threw the first punch, the one that he had meant to keep Fairchild from throwing. It never connected. 

Fairchild grabbed him from one side and a stranger from the other. They wrestled him aside—unnecessarily, thought Ralph, for the interruption had been enough to overcome that single moment of blind recklessness. 

"It's fine," said Ralph. "Let me go."

In many a bar fight, obeying such a demand would have been foolish, but the sublieutenant had been drilled to take Ralph's commands without question. He released Ralph immediately; the other man followed suit a moment later.

The Lieutenant from the _Hood_ gave him a scornful look and muttered something uncomplimentary before melting back into the crowd.

Ralph straightened his uniform and glanced quickly around, the consciousness of his situation coming just a bit later than it ought. A few men were watching, but it would have taken a proper punch-up to impress itself upon the Scapa Flow officers' club. Interest was waning quickly now that it was clear the fight had been averted.

"Jesus Christ," said Ralph, who could not quite find the words for _I was a bloody fool_. He was still breathing hard.

"He would have deserved it," said Fairchild.

"I was a bloody fool." That was better; it had to be said. Ralph turned to the stranger. "Thanks; sorry. Poor way to make an introduction."

It was another Lieutenant. Royal Navy stripes. Neat, dark hair and a kind expression.

"I only heard the last," he said, with a measured tone that could have come from one of the more sympathetic prefects at Ralph's old school. "It didn't seem to me that he was making any friends. But perhaps you'd like to get some air."

It was, thought Ralph, the kindest possible way of expressing the universal message _why don't you get the hell out of here before you cause any more trouble_.

"Do come along, if you like," said Fairchild unexpectedly.

Even more unexpectedly, the stranger accepted the invitation.

Only a few steps from the building, the darkness over the Orkneys seemed absolute. So did the mud, only half frozen. They paused where they were, momentarily at a loss.

"If it weren't for the blackout I'd offer you a fag," said Fairchild to their new companion.

"Thanks awfully; that's quite all right."

Together they stood gazing up at the sky. It was a clear night, crisp and arctic. Between the buildings, one could see the Milky Way spread from pole to pole over the Flow, and here and there the silhouettes of destroyers. A faint aurora played, unregarded, out of the corner of one's eye.

"I'm Walker," the Lieutenant added. "They call me 'Whisky,' or 'Johnnie' if you like. As it happens my Christian name actually is John."

"How do you do. I'm Kenneth Fairchild. And this is Lieutenant Lanyon, captain of the _Stella Maria_."

"An armed trawler," said Ralph wryly. "In case you were wondering."

"Whatever he might have said back there," said John, "I've always felt that there would be nothing better than to have a ship of one's own."

In another mood Ralph might have told him to come off it, but there was a sincerity in the man's voice that was unquestionable.

"I was a second mate in the merchant marine before this all kicked off," said Ralph. "Started on the lower decks in '33 and it seemed a hell of a long way to make captain. It would be still. I haven't any complaints."

"It seems just as long to me. Lieutenants come by the half dozen on a battleship." He paused. "When I went to sea for the first time, properly, I knew that there was no point in doing anything else. I was fifteen, we crossed the Channel in a yacht. But that was an accident."

"How the hell do you sail across the Channel by accident?"

Lieutenant Walker laughed. "It's rather a long story."

"Look," said Ralph, "I would offer to buy you a drink but I'd rather leave that lot some time to forget about my face. Have you a long enough leave to come back to the ship? We can't entertain you handsomely but the wardroom is just the two of us, and we've enough pink gin to float a destroyer."

"Thanks. I should love to."

***

The fortnight stretched out before them, full of all the delights that Scapa Flow had to offer—which was to say, very few. The men were happy enough to have an unexpected opportunity for leave. They went off in turns, leaving behind a skeleton crew who lay on deck in the unseasonably warm weather—it nearly touched sixty one day—and painted the funnel and coiled ropes with a lassitude that fell just short of deserving reproach.

Fairchild said that he would take no more than a week of leave; it was the sort of sacrificial gesture that Ralph would have refused if he'd thought he had any hope of convincing his sub otherwise.

"I won't have far to go," said Fairchild one fine afternoon as they were making a tour of the deck. "Jeanie's coming up here, can you believe it? Eight hours on the ferry from Aberdeen. She was leaving first thing; she ought to be arriving in Stromness just now."

"I thought there wasn't a hotel room to be had in the whole of the north of Scotland," Ralph replied, cursing himself already for being drawn into a discussion in which he had no desire to take part.

"There isn't. But her father has friends in Kirkwall, and they've invited her to stay even though they've got two Wrens billeted with them already. They haven't room in the house; it's a sort of a barn, I believe, but we were planning to go camping anyway. Cycling holiday, sort of thing."

Ralph realised that he was failing to muster the requisite enthusiasm. "Camping on the Orkneys in March. You'll be blown away."

"We'll give it a try at least. She's bringing all the tents and gear up on the ferry. All I've got to provide is the blankets, but she gave me those in the first place as well."

Fairchild subsided into a happy silence, no doubt contemplating the joys of giving his girl the very blankets off his bunk. Ralph wondered whether she would mind the drops of blood which, despite the best efforts of their steward, still clung to a corner of the battleship grey wool.

"You there, Cotton!" shouted Ralph. "Look sharp! I won't have paint slopped everywhere."

An apologetic salute. Cotton was a freckled boy from Sheffield whose mouth always seemed to quirk up at the corner. It was difficult to take against him, but painting was clearly not his avocation.

"Sorry, sir," said Fairchild. "Should have spotted that. I was dreaming a bit."

"Overdue for leave, there you have it."

Fairchild paused, gazing out at a harbour as smooth as glass. "And what about you, sir?"

"Too much to be done." Belatedly he realised that Fairchild might take this as a sign that he, too, ought to stay behind. "I'd rather be aboard ship anyway. I'm used to it by now."

 _Why not_ , Ralph asked himself, _simply say 'I enjoy drinking by myself in the evening' and be done with it?_

"We thought we'd make a bit of an expedition of it; I meant to say, Lieutenant Walker and his girl are coming along for the cycling. So if you could manage to leave the ship for a night or two, Jeanie is sure the bigger tent will sleep three, at a squeeze."

It was not an enticing thought, spending a night on a sheep-ridden moor squeezed into a damp tent with two other men, even if one of them was Fairchild. Especially if one of them was Fairchild, in which case it would be little short of torture. And all to guarantee the chastity of Jeanie Mackintosh, which was what these hearty, wholesome group trips usually boiled down to in the end.

Ralph pondered whether the best lesson he could teach his sub might not be the necessity of getting in a good fuck before going off to sea. Then again, perhaps there was something in the old adage about having the strength of ten. Something Ralph himself had lost a long, long time before.

He heard the planes several seconds before he thought to look up. They had occasional flights overhead from the naval air station, nothing out of the ordinary. It must have been something in the pitch of the engines that finally prompted him to squint towards the south, where a distant cluster of dots were visible against the glare of the sun.

The air raid sirens on shore began to warble.

"Germans!" shouted Fairchild. "Action stations!"

It was a pitifully reduced crew that scrambled for their places. Fairchild ran for the pom-pom; Ralph, after a split-second, followed. He could do no good on the bridge while they were at anchor in port.

Their gun was one of the first in Scapa Flow to open up. It was followed by a symphony of others echoing across the sound: the ineffective stutter of machine guns and the Stella Maria's own Oerlikon, the steady beat of the Bofors 40mm on bigger ships and, at a distance, the deep, almost subterranean _crump_ of heavy, massive naval guns. Tracer fire streamed into the clear air all around them.

At close range even the single pom-pom was nearly deafening. The ship shuddered continually under the recoil. Terrified birds wheeled up into the air in the thousands, the only victims of the barrage. For all the shot and shell, the bombers droned steadily onwards towards Scapa. 

The planes' bay doors were open; bombs tumbled out, oddly clear and visible. 

A spout of water. Another. An explosion at a great distance, too far to identify the ship. 

He forced himself to look away, concentrating only on speed and elevation and the instructions he was rapping out to Fairchild at the sights of the pom-pom.

It was over. An eternity later or no time at all, it was impossible to say. The sirens were still wailing on the shore, under an empty sky. Smoke rose from the mainland and all the air drifted with it. The cordite fumes were almost choking. It had not been like this in their drills, though none of the essentials were changed. One had not looked up to the sky afterwards, wondering what else might come.

Ralph wiped at his forehead with a handkerchief, feeling a sudden rush of heat, as if he were in the Suez and not Scotland. Fairchild turned towards him, his face white and grimed with soot from the gun.

"So that's an air raid," he said.

"Yes," said Ralph. He paused. "All right?"

"Think so, sir."

He did not look as though he were entirely sure; but then Ralph was not sure himself. There were exclamations over at the Oerlikon, though with precious little to show for the ammunition expended. Suddenly the All Clear began to sound. Fairchild gave him a shaky smile.

"Right," said Ralph sharply. "Stand down."

***

It was only later that he learned the toll of the air raid: three dead sailors on the H.M.S. _Norfolk_ and one civilian on the mainland. Fairchild had left on leave the following morning, looking still rather shaky (though Ralph never would have said so) despite all his quick action under fire.

Ralph busied himself as much as he could with the demands of the ship; it was the worst time possible for reflection. He sat in the empty wardroom at night looking at the blank pages of a letter to Alec for which he could not find the words, and the pages of his private journal, in which he could think of nothing suitable to set down other than a short entry written in the brisk, telegraphic language of a ship's log.

_16 March. Air raid at 15.00. Crew did bloody well. Fairchild and I on the pom-pom together since Norris was on liberty. Don't think we got a single one of them. (Air cover??)_

_Fairchild says at least now we have seen action. I love him; impossible not to._

He did not write this last but the mere fact of having contemplated it convinced him there was nothing else that could decently or honestly be said. He stared hard at the journal, willing the unwritten words to be something other than what they were. The gin bottle sat on the table in his peripheral vision, just out of reach, offering its own more eloquent reproach.

What the hell was he meant to do? Soon they would be back at sea, serving together side-by-side, watch-on-watch without any respite. No transfer; no hope beyond carrying on, beyond surviving the war. It was intolerable. It was just that the alternatives were worse.

Perhaps Alec would have had advice; no, naturally Alec would have had advice, whether it was any use or not. Ralph imagined him sitting on the leatherette couch opposite: incongruous in his civilian dress, legs crossed, smoking hard and looking around the little wardroom with his usual intent expression. Alec did not miss much.

_So, Dr. Deacon, what about it?_

The imaginary Alec turned his sharp gaze on Ralph. 

_Haven't I told you not to call me that, Ralph? I'm not a doctor yet, it's embarrassing. Besides, if you want a proper session of psychoanalysis, oughtn't you to be lying down over here instead of sitting at that table as if you're about to bolt any minute?_

_I'm the captain, Alec; I have responsibilities. I might be wanted at any minute._

Alec said nothing, merely tapped the ash from his cigarette into thin air.

 _Besides_ , Ralph added, _I only want you to tell me what to do about Fairchild._

He felt a level of annoyance entirely out of proportion to the fact that he was holding up both sides of the conversation.

_Had you considered the fact that it isn't him at all? After all, here you are on this ship together for days on end with no one else for company. I don't count the sailors; you must be the only queer in England who lives surrounded by seamen and dreaming of ex-public schoolboys, instead of the reverse. No, my dear, you do have a type, there's no point denying it. I don't flatter myself that I was anything different, just another way for you to forget the sea. For a time anyway._

_Yes, Ralph, I daresay he is a sterling soul. You haven't bad taste, when you keep your hand in. But couldn't it be more than that? Couldn't it be the war? Isn't it simpler to love someone, and suffer for it, than to spend your days thinking about the fact that you might die tomorrow? That's certainly been my philosophy._

_I'd rather not—_ Ralph began.

_Think about it, yes, exactly my point._

Ralph drummed his fingers impatiently on his open journal: _But what am I meant to do, Alec? What_ can _I do?_

Faintly, from on deck, there came the piping for Up Spirits. Ralph looked away; when he looked back, there was nothing but the empty couch. He tried to conjure up the thought of Alec once more but imagination failed him. All that remained was a faint, nostalgic arousal accompanied by the unspeakable thought that what war had begun, only war could finish.

He stretched his legs and went above.

***

Predictably, the refit of the _Stella Maria_ stretched out beyond the fortnight. If she had ever been at the front of the queue—which Ralph sincerely doubted—she was pushed relentlessly downwards by the arrival of other ships seemingly more essential to the functioning of the Royal Navy. Ralph did not question the truth of this but found it difficult to school himself to the necessary patience.

From his ratings he asked what he considered a standard amount of painting and scraping of rust—reflecting that there was most certainly a reason for the existence of First Lieutenants, since as the captain of the _Stella Maria_ he had already become remote from the commission of such tasks—and then he set them free to enjoy whatever dubious pleasures they could find in the vicinity of Scapa Flow.

As for himself, he soon decided that the best camaraderie was found among his fellow trawler captains. In Aberdeen his opposite numbers had been mainly skipper captains, crusty old salts who kept themselves to themselves and considered even an R.N.V.R. commission to be too close to regular Navy for comfort. Here, however, a good few of the larger anti-submarine trawlers were captained by R.N.R. officers, mainly ex-Navy men who had gone into the merchant marine in the 20s and the 30s, years when Naval berths were hard to come by. Not a few of them were willing to reminisce, given half the chance.

Rather than going ashore to the officers' mess, Ralph went visiting from wardroom to wardroom, a common enough practice in port for those in search of gossip, drink, or both. He knew enough to make himself a welcome one, and spent not a few satisfactory hours swapping stories about monsoon season in the Indian Ocean or hearing tales about life onboard a gunboat on the Tigris and the Yangzte in the twenties. 

The most vivid of those tales were from the captain of the HMT _Northern Star_. Lieutenant-Commander Fletcher-Cooke, a garrulous man in his fifties, unfolded at patient length the story of the Wanhsien Incident, when two British merchant ships had been boarded and seized by the Chinese, and their crews only rescued at the cost of a pitched naval battle.

"That was when I was First Lieutenant on the _Cockchafer_ ," he concluded.

Ralph took a sudden swallow of pink gin in order to plausibly disguise an attack of coughing. Having heard tell of the old HMS _Fairy_ , as well as rumours about the _Flower_ -class corvette HMS _Pansy_ (swiftly rechristened the _Heartsease_ ), he could only assume that there was a chap at the Admiralty with an ironic sense of humour.

"And she's still on Yangzte patrol to this day, as far as I know," added the Lieutenant Commander. "Odd to think, isn't it? That was back in '26; I suppose you were still at school."

"I was," acknowledged Ralph.

"Then that sub of yours must have been a babe in arms. How do you find him, by the way? Any good? My two subs couldn't be keener, but to be frank they still don't know their arse from their elbow."

Ralph considered that he was privileged to receive a confidence such as this, as a newly minted Tempy. Lieutenant R.N.V.R. Perhaps it was this feeling of having become one of the fraternity that caused him to unbend slightly.

"Sometimes I think I like him too much," Ralph said. "Not that I give him any special treatment; far from it. If anything I'm far harder on him than he deserves, for fear of the other. It's a terribly small ship. There's no one but the two of us."

As soon as the words were out of his mouth he wondered whether he had said too much. But the Lieutenant Commander was nodding along with him.

"Difficult." He frowned, an expression which brought out in his face all the wear of a life at sea, while at the same time making him appear sage and thoughtful. "There's something to be said for being an utter bastard. At least they know where they stand."

"And are you? If you don't mind my asking."

"Not on a ship like this; it wouldn't do." He laughed. "Though you'll have to ask my subs, perhaps I am and I just stopped noticing. More gin?"

"Not for me," said Ralph, rising from the table. "I had better be going. But thank you, sir. For the drink and the advice both."

"Any time, Lanyon. And don't call me 'sir,' we're all captains together here."

***

Along with the visits came the usual Fleet gossip, which in March of 1940 was something more than the usual round of promotions, scandals and backbiting. It meant that Ralph had something to relate when Fairchild finally returned from his cycling tour, kitbag slung jauntily over his shoulder.

"Submarines everywhere," he said when Fairchild joined him on the bridge. "There have been at least two sightings in Holm Sound, just outside the blockships. They're skittish enough that they've got destroyers out patrolling in Moray Firth, not that you or I are meant to know that. I shouldn't wonder if the Germans had something up their sleeves."

"I oughtn't to have gone away," said Fairchild, looking faintly guilty.

"No? Didn't have a good time, then? Because we certainly weren't going anyway. We still aren't. One begins to wonder whether the Navy isn't finding the trawlers more trouble than they're worth; some bloody fool rammed a fishing trawler the other day off Todd Head. Just one survivor. Heads ought to roll, there's no point having the ships if they're only going to give them to bunglers. And it's not as if it was the first time either."

Fairchild nodded, idly reading through some piece of Admiralty bumph, but one could tell that his mind was still back with his girl.

"Too good a time," he said.

After a long pause he looked up from the paper, directly at Ralph. Though Ralph might be able to keep his feet in any storm, the impact of those light hazel eyes always struck him with a physical force.

"Was it?" said Ralph mildly.

"I can't stop thinking about Jeanie being on that ferry when the raid happened. It didn't occur to me during the raid, thank God, I hadn't time to think of anything but the pom-pom. Afterwards, though... well, you must have seen. I didn't like to say, but that's when I was the most terrified, and I stayed that way until I saw her on the pier at Stromness. It's odd, sir. One isn't afraid for oneself, and yet if it's someone you love that's in danger... but perhaps I'm talking nonsense."

"Not at all," said Ralph, but did not trust himself to elaborate further.

"I should have proposed. I will do, next time I see her. There's nothing else for it; at least then I'll know."

Fairchild expressed himself as if a proposal involved the same degree of decisive courage required by an air raid. Ralph said nothing.

"It won't be a distraction from the ship, sir, don't worry. I won't let it."

"No objection from me; when it comes off I shall be the first to congratulate you. And I don't doubt it will."

And _that_ , Ralph reflected, had in its way required a good measure of heroic resolution.

"We would want you to be the best man, of course, if you'd be willing."

It ought not to have been a surprise—he had rather made a habit of serving in the role, four times at last count—but it threw the reality of the thing into sharp relief, even if Ralph had privately considered them engaged ever since that dinner in Aberdeen. It was the shock which forced him into false levity.

"You and Jeanie would? Seems to me that you've been discussing things in the wrong order."

"Well, no, not in so many words. But I know what she would say about it."

Wartime romances; he spoke with all the confidence that only two months' acquaintance could bring. Ralph reminded himself that he and Alec had moved in together after a similar span of time, and most of that, on Ralph's part, spent away. Perhaps in the end that had been a lesson in how little one could truly know another person.

Nothing to do with Fairchild and Jeanie, this.

"I'd be honoured," said Ralph, because he knew it was expected him. "Now, let's see about getting things squared away."


	7. Chapter 7

Two more trips out into the Moray Firth, combing the waters watch-upon-watch for elusive Asdic contacts. Again they spent their depth charges into the waves and brought nothing to the surface but the confused and turbulent sea. It was beginning to seem, as the April days slowly lengthened, as if this would be the story of the war for them.

Their orders were to return to Scapa Flow for coaling; proof, thought Ralph, of the seriousness of the U-boat threat to the Home Fleet. Or perhaps it was merely an administrative technicality, a shuffling of ships on paper which had no meaning other than to balance some obscure spreadsheet. Attempting to discern the motives of the Admiralty at such a great distance was about as edifying as reading leaves in a teacup, and arguably even less productive.

Fairchild had made a noble attempt not to appear downhearted at the news. Once they were back in Scapa, however, his mood noticeably drooped. He was unable to muster the enthusiasm for rounds of wardroom visiting (a fact for which Ralph felt inappropriately grateful) and, when not absorbed by his duties, spent his time in the wardroom either writing letters or attempting unconvincingly to distract himself with the crossword. 

Ralph had reconciled himself to the crossword. If nothing else it gave him an opportunity to gaze unobserved in his sublieutenant's direction: Fairchild with a cup of kye at his elbow, hair burnished by the morning sun, biting thoughtfully on his pencil. It would have made a picture if Ralph had been the sort to bother with that sort of thing. As it was, he thought he never would forget it.

That particular morning Ralph was busying himself with a loose button on his jacket when the steward came in with the papers folded under his arm. Fairchild always took them first anyway, and had been surreptitiously listening for footsteps ever since they had heard the morning boat come alongside.

"I can take that for you, sir," said the steward. "Officer like yourself oughtn't to be sewing on buttons."

Ralph shook his head. It was not worth mentioning that it was his steward's lack of attention to detail that had caused the trouble in the first place.

"No need," he said. "Though I have trouble believing that there's not one solitary spool of navy blue button thread on this ship."

"I'm sure one of the lads will have some, sir. I'll see what I can scrounge up."

He disappeared again and Ralph went back to putting the finishing touches on the button.

"Norway," said Fairchild, out of the blue.

"What was the clue?" Ralph responded absentmindedly.

Fairchild held up the front page. "Germany has invaded Norway."

If Scapa Flow had been on a war footing before, it now acquired a whole new consciousness of the imminence of action. News of far-away Poland had been one thing, but Norway from the Orkneys was barely a day at sea, a stretch of the North Sea crossed and recrossed by fishermen over the centuries. It was clear now why attacks on the base had been so persistent over the past weeks.

Most of the Home Fleet had left Scapa a few days earlier; Ralph wondered whether they had had some wind of the German invasion plans. After the news, yet more ships sailed. Everyone was speculating, wishing in not so veiled terms for a second—and perhaps more successful—Battle of Jutland. Ralph overheard Sylvester telling Tanner sententiously that the Germans had overreached themselves; this was the best thing that could have happened, as a British sweep of Norway, and control of the North Sea, would bring the Kriegsmarine to their knees. Ralph only hoped it might be so simple. He had his doubts.

As for the _Stella Maria_ , her repairs done, she was left kicking her heels awaiting orders. Fairchild's crosswords were forgotten. Now he and Ralph bent their heads together over the front pages, attempting to reconstruct in naval order on the chartroom table the fine points of the Battle of Narvik. Five British destroyers were represented by Ralph's spare buttons, with their six German adversaries rather more ignominiously picked out with matchsticks. At some length, and at third hand, Ralph went through the story of the engagement, with the most brightly polished of the buttons representing the HMS _Hardy_ , whose captain had been mortally wounded in the course of the battle. His final signal had been _Continue to engage the enemy_.

"He should win the VC," concluded Ralph solemnly.

"It makes a difference, seeing it all laid out like this. More so than reading about it at King Alfred. Only one wonders how well one would grasp it all, put it into action I mean, if one..."

He trailed off, gazing thoughtfully at the three remaining buttons. Without having to be told Ralph knew that he was imagining himself on a bridge in that far-away fjord, his captain incapacitated or dead, having himself to make the decisions upon which rested the lives of his crew and the fate of the battle.

"If we get sent into battle against six destroyers, God help us all," said Ralph.

Fairchild shook his head. "If only we would be sent anywhere."

"Never make a wish like that; you just might get it."

It seemed as though they waited in Scapa for an age, as if the harbour were a Charybdis from which only a fortunate few ships escaped. In fact it was not even a week. 

First came their reassignment to a new anti-submarine group, the 41st, whose senior officer was none other than Captain Fletcher-Cooke of the _Northern Star_. Ralph allowed himself a moment of relief at the thought that, wherever they were bound, they would be going in company with an officer who knew more about naval service than had been taught in the six-week course.

Next came the orders, unedifying in the extreme, as Naval orders usually were: they, with the 41st anti-submarine striking group, were to proceed fifty miles due east of Scapa Flow, there to await further instructions from their senior officer.

"It'll be Norway, of course," said Fairchild confidentially in the wardroom.

"I don't think there's any 'of course' when it comes to the Navy," said Ralph. "But what else can it be?"

That day was fair, with a hint of springtime, and piled cumulus clouds stretching across the sky. At the rendezvous point the three trawlers rode the waves almost gaily as they waited for Fletcher-Cooke to rip open his sealed orders. Everyone watched with bated breath as the message flickered on the Aldis lamp.

The coxswain let out an impressed whistle.

"Bloody hell," he said. "Narvik."

***

Narvik seemed the end of the earth, 140 miles north of the arctic circle, off every map save the Admiralty charts. The _Stella Maria_ steamed into the Ofot Fjord by the veiled light of an early dawn, not long after three a.m. at that latitude. High, thin clouds trailed across a pastel sky, shading into mountain peaks still capped with snow. In most places, indeed, the snow ran right down to the waterline.

At that hour it was so still that Ralph found it difficult to believe the war had touched this corner of the world. The trawlers made their way slowly into the wide fjord, making only a little steam that, rising in the quiet air, blended with the last of the morning fog. Within the fjord the sea was calm. The sound of water lapping past the _Stella Maria_ 's hull was the most noticeable noise of all, with only the slight vibration of the deck underfoot reminding one of the work of engineers and stokers below. A few early-rising seabirds wheeled overhead.

"Taken us to the wrong place, skipper?" said Swaleby, one of the fishermen. "Maybe it's Sweden after all."

Norris replied before Ralph could get a word in. "Shut your bloody mouth, Bill. Have a look at that." 

And then more formally, "Sir, on the starboard quarter."

Ralph raised his glasses for closer inspection. On the snowy shoreline, just at the entrance to another long fjord, lay the wreck of a beached and capsized destroyer, her superstructure torn and riddled by the impact of shells.

"That will be the _Hardy_ ," said Ralph.

With his other hand he removed his cap. After a moment the ratings followed suit.

"It looks as though we've missed it all," said Norris some time later. The disappointment in his voice was obvious, though it was edged with a sort of quiet reverence, as though he could imagine no more noble fate than to be driven ashore under German gunfire in an unknown fjord.

"Possibly," said Ralph. "But you haven't any idea; those hills could be stiff with German soldiers."

Another pause.

"Well, are they?" said Swaleby finally. 

He had never entirely mastered the formality required by Navy custom; if anything Ralph liked him for it, but that fact, like so many others, could never be allowed to show.

"If I saw any sign of it," said Ralph, "we would be at action stations. Now that will be all, Swaleby."

Nonetheless there were Germans ashore; if not in the mountains immediately visible to the sailors on the _Stella Maria_ , then in others not so far distant. British troops were pushing inland somewhere, through feet of snow and roads of churned-up mud, while Norwegians fought on their skis. It would be, no doubt, a tale worthy of the _Boy's Own Paper_ , but none of it was the concern of the Royal Navy.

Though Narvik itself, still held by the Germans, lay at the end of the Ofot Fjord, the _Stella Maria_ and her fellow trawlers were forbidden from edging into that final harbour. Instead they were set to patrolling up and down the long fjord, listening watch-upon-watch for German submarines that might have slipped past the British naval cordon. For Macallister, their single Asdic operator, it was intense and painstaking work complicated by the shallow waters and steep sides of the fjord, which created ghosts and echoes where nothing existed in reality. 

They spent hours at a standstill lying at anchor close to the shoreline, steam drawn down to a minimum, so that Macallister could have a proper chance to listen. Though it was not much above freezing the sun was intense, burning down out of a deep blue sky. Ralph and Fairchild stood side by side at the rail in shirtsleeves, watching the scene, while off-duty sailors fished off the bow. 

On shore the spring thaw was well underway. Even the north-facing cliffs, which in places stretched right down to the waterline, were beginning to feel the influence of spring, their dark rock faces running with meltwater trickling down from above. Here and there remained large cascades of ice standing stately as pillars, as big around as a man, their surfaces rippled and clear.

"I always did mean to get to the Continent again before war broke out," Fairchild observed.

"It's been a while since I did it what you might call properly. I spent two years on the Quebec to Avonmouth run; a good berth after a long run of bad luck, so I couldn't really throw it over, plus I had someone ashore." The _someone_ had been Alec, but the pleasure of the warm afternoon had made him less guarded than he might otherwise have been. "Before that it was the Far East, mostly. Last time I saw Paris was on a school trip, but I was a prefect then so I hadn't really the chance to break out."

"Ever been to Berlin?"

"Well," said Ralph. "Yes and no."

Now that _had_ been a breakout. Three days of leave in Hamburg in the middle of the past decade, soon after he'd finished his two years of women. He'd gone overnight by train and had not slept more than an hour or two, as far as he remembered, until he was back on his ship. Nothing in those three days could be considered edifying for young men; even Alec had only heard the story in parts. It felt already as if he were looking back on it from a long distance, though it could not have been over five years ago.

"Only I've just been reading _Goodbye to Berlin_. It really is rather good. All the things that the Nazis despise, if you see what I mean."

"Mmm," said Ralph, as discouragingly as he could manage. On reflection he realised that it had an air of disapproval as well.

Down on deck a small group of sailors were smoking, idly chucking pieces of scrap wood and spent shell casings at the ice on the cliff face. Suddenly one of the largest of the icicles came loose, toppling into the water with a mighty smash. Little bits of ice skittered across the deck. Sylvester, who had been sitting half asleep on the sunny side of the ship, started to his feet and began to roundly abuse the men.

"Now I know how the captain of the _Titanic_ felt," observed Ralph wryly, looking down at the remnants of the ice bobbing in the clear fjord water. 

"Have you seen them before? Proper icebergs, I mean."

"Oh, I've had my fill of them. Nothing like making your way at Slow Ahead through Iceberg Alley in the fog—April and May are the worst, you wouldn't think—with the captain asleep below, and five hundred passengers besides. As a first officer, I don't recommend the experience. But once upon a time I was very keen on that sort of thing. I was accepted on a research expedition to the Arctic..."

He stopped himself.

"Did you not end up going?" asked Fairchild, turning towards Ralph with an expression of interest. 

He was holding his cap under his arm, and his face had turned pink with the sun. On his nose one could just make out a scattering of freckles.

"It didn't work out," said Ralph gruffly, putting on his own cap.

He had at least mastered the art of squashing conversation. After such a companionable exchange it felt unnecessarily brutal, an abuse of rank, but perhaps it was just the opposite. Perhaps Fairchild would not have given him the time of day if Ralph had not been his commanding officer. Ralph was always having to draw himself up short: of presumption, of confession, of intimacy, of everything he would have otherwise desired.

But never mind. Ralph found himself wishing, not for the first time, for some action. It would clear his mind, wash away the haze of romance that clung about that quiet fjord in the warm sun. It would be something useful to do.

That was about the last time he made that wish.

***

The first air raid came that evening. It was after the start of the first watch, and near sunset, in that month and at that latitude close to nine o'clock at night. Ralph, below in the wardroom looking over charts, was already anticipating Pipe Down and the calm of another night off the open sea. He was just pondering the convolutions of the Lofotens—only too relevant if they were to be sent to Svolvaer for coaling—when the bell sounded for action stations. By the time that he had scrambled onto the bridge, the Oerlikon had already opened up.

"Planes at 140 degrees," said Fairchild breathlessly, his eyes wide as he turned to Ralph.

"Relieved," said Ralph. "I have the bridge."

It was a squadron of Stukas, approaching with almost painful slowness over the mountains to the south, silhouetted against the milky edge of an approaching weather front. The _Stella Maria_ was close to the centre of the fjord, as plain as might be; her opposite number, Fletcher-Cooke's ship, was just visible, steaming towards them down the fjord. On her deck distant figures were running for the guns.

In Scapa Flow they had been surrounded by the stoutest antiaircraft defences in the British Isles. In Scapa Flow they had been surrounded by the Home Fleet, more enticing targets carrying bigger guns by far. As soon as the air raid sirens onshore had sounded, battleships and destroyers alike had opened up with heavy naval guns and eight-barrelled pom-poms.

Suddenly the Ofot Fjord seemed a very lonely place, with two small trawlers each armed with one single pom-pom. They could not make a run for it; they had their orders, they hadn't the speed, and in any case there was nowhere to run but the open sea. There was nothing for it but to hold one's ground and fight.

Fight they did, though it did little good. The wail of the Stukas echoed between the cliffs, and water cannoned upwards as the bombs began to fall. At _Stella Maria_ 's pom-pom the men fired until the gun was too hot to touch, and then carried on firing. Ralph ordered evasive manoeuvres that did not seem to make a blind bit of difference. 

Across the fjord, it was the _Northern Star_ that seemed to be taking the brunt of the strafing. Tracery lines of machine gun bullets tracked across her wake, etched in tiny splahes. Splinters flew.

It was unbearably hot and then it was over.

This time there was no cheering from the Oerlikon, only a few faint exclamations of defiance that sounded, thought Ralph, rather more like relief. He took a breath and forced himself to let go of the railing, which he had been gripping throughout the engagement.

"Swaleby," he said sharply. "Are you wounded?"

"No sir," said the young man slowly, taking away from his cheek a hand dabbed with blood. "I don't think so sir. Just caught a bit of something, that's all."

It was a scratch from a shell casing, nothing more. He sent the lad below to be swabbed with Mercurochrome and did not dwell on it.

A few moments later, while he was casting half an eye over the men sponging and greasing the Oerlikon, Tanner approached.

" _Northern Star_ signalled, sir." Ralph cursed himself; he had missed it. "Their captain is wounded. Asks if you'll come aboard."

Ralph did not like any of it. Not the notion of having to leave his own ship without her captain when another raid could come at any minute; not (and this emphatically) the notion of Fletcher-Cooke being wounded severely enough to want his inadequate medical attentions. But there was nothing to be done.

He brought the _Stella Maria_ alongside the _Northern Star_. Not close enough to jump; he dared not risk a collision, leaving an inexperienced officer at the helm with another aboard the other ship. So it was the slow and painful process of lowering the ship's boat and being rowed across.

"I won't be longer than I can help," he said to Sanders, who had done the rowing as neatly as Fairchild could have asked. "If there's another raid, lie as close to the ship as you can. Between them might be better, but watch they don't get the idea to go anywhere."

"I was thinking that myself, sir."

Ralph quickly climbed the rope ladder that was thrown down to him, which lay close against the rusty, icy hull. He was met by a circle of anxious crewmen and, pushing his way through the crowd, one green sublieutenant who looked years younger than Fairchild.

"What happened?" said Ralph.

"Shot through the shoulder," said the young officer, swallowing nervously. "He's below in the wardroom. Our Lieutenant's on the bridge; the Captain said you would know what to do."

"Go to the Lieutenant and have him signal for help, if you haven't already. Yes, W/T, it's important enough. We haven't a sickbay on the _Stella Maria_ any more than you do. There's no point in fooling around."

Ralph went immediately below. The wardroom of the _Northern Star_ was a homely, familiar place and, incongruously, there was a kettle just starting to boil. Fletcher-Cooke was sat on one of the benches, wincing as another ineffectual sublieutenant held a bloody cloth to his shoulder. There was a used morphine syrette on the table, showing that something, at least, had been done.

"Sir," said Ralph.

"Lanyon. Thank God you're here. Bit of bad luck."

"I should say so."

"Ten years in the Navy," said Fletcher-Cooke, "and the worst I ever had was a splinter. God bless the R.N.R."

One could tell that he was making an effort to be jovial, as if it were Ralph's spirits that needed keeping up. But his face was ashen pale; though he could not have been much above fifty, he looked suddenly a decade or more beyond it, lines of pain graven so deeply that one could hardly imagine that they would ever leave him. Ralph had known captains more advanced in years, men worn beyond imagining by lives wasted on tramp steamers in the tropical sun. But in that moment he felt, in a way that he had not before, the pity of sending old men into battle.

He could do very little beyond the simplest of tasks: stopping the bleeding and bandaging the wound, after dusting it liberally with sulfa powder. Thankfully it was a through-and-through. Nonetheless Ralph suspected that a surgeon would be kept busy removing bone fragments, if the arm were to be saved at all, which seemed by no means a sure thing. All that would have to wait until he could be brought to a field hospital, or the sickbay of a larger ship.

"I've had them send a signal. You'll have earned your ticket for the Lofotens."

Fletcher-Cooke mustered a smile. "You'll be commodore of the fleet, Lanyon."

"It won't be for long." said Ralph, privately thinking that the Lieutenant-Commander's days of active service were over.

"Never mind that." He leaned forward. "My first lieutenant is a good sort; which of you has seniority I don't know, it can only be a matter of days. But use your own judgment. I'm afraid it will only get worse from here." 

"Sir," said Ralph. "Thank you, sir."

"No, don't—" Leaning back again, he caught a painful breath. The morphine could only do so much. "Don't thank me. You'll see. Hell of a war to be mixed up in."

It was the dead of night by the time that a boat arrived from Svolvaer to collect the wounded Lieutenant-Commander. Ralph was back on the _Stella Maria_ by then, busy receiving reports from the coxswain and the ship's carpenter (who doubled as the Oerlikon gunner) about the minor damage to the deck and wheelhouse. An unlucky shot had smashed a window pane, and the barometer, but there were spares for both below.

Far away, across the water, he heard the engine of the motor torpedo boat opening up. They would be back in the Lofoten Islands, one hoped, by dawn.

 _Godspeed_ , thought Ralph and said a silent prayer, an instinct that he had never really lost.

***

Over the following days the air raids went on, irregularly but continually. It was nothing like the relentless pasting that the _Stella Maria_ 's sister trawlers were getting down the coast in Namsos, more sunk than afloat; Ralph knew this, and told himself sternly to be grateful for small mercies, but nonetheless it was bad enough. They spent the majority of the lengthening daylight hours at action stations, all hands at their duties with no possibility of sleep. Most of the German planes called out by the spotters were high and distant, carrying on over the Ofot Fjord to the north towards Harstadt or Tromsø, and took no notice of the small trawlers guarding the approaches to Narvik. But every so often it was otherwise.

Even Ralph felt a shiver when he saw the planes beginning to dive. What wore him more than anything was the powerlessness. Though the Stella Maria hugged the shoreline, sheltering from the bombardment as best she could under the steep cliffs, there was nothing they could do to avert it and precious little they could do to retaliate.

In desperation they put into action a plan that Cotton, of all people, had hatched: to cover the _Stella Maria_ with small pine trees from the shore, by way of camouflage. At best, one assumed, the _Stella Maria_ would appear in the guise of a small, mobile island. 

He had a working party ashore for a morning, cutting the trees and then, once aboard, arranging them on the deck and in the rigging to make the illusion complete. 

It was not much of an illusion. Ralph doubted whether the Stuka pilots would be so easily fooled; from the air, no doubt, the effect was comic. On top of that, there was the inconvenience of stray branches to trip over. But morale was shaky enough that he considered it a price worth paying.

After one of the hottest of the attacks Swaleby, who had been fishing the North Sea in tiny ships since he was sixteen, had begun to shiver and could not stop.

"But I don't think he's malingering," said Fairchild cautiously, as though he expected that Ralph might demand a court-martial and summary execution for dereliction of duty.

After a pause Ralph answered: "I don't think so either."

Alec, for reasons known only to himself, had once spent nearly an hour describing to him Freud's theories on the death drive and their application to 'shell shock' and war neurosis. Though Ralph could not now have summarised the theoretical portion of the discussion, something in it had made an impression on him; he had retained from it at least the conviction that some men, for whatever reason, could not help themselves.

He assigned Swaleby to light duties below; it would make them shorthanded, but then they were shorthanded anyway, they would always be shorthanded, and in the end he concluded that having a useless man below was, after all, rather better than having a useless man on lookout.

"But I don't like it," he said to Fairchild. "We're under-armed and under-manned and there's damn all we can do about it." 

Even Fairchild's optimism seemed ready to fail him. His fresh complexion was faded by weariness; he had dark circles under his eyes.

"It isn't a naval battle at all," he said. "It's an air war. We've only got a walk-on part."

"Never mind," said Ralph crisply, feeling that he had shared too much in the way of doubt. "We're here, and the Admiralty want us here, so we'd better get on with it."

Privately he was hoping for a U-boat. 

***

The next day dawned in a flurry of snow showers. In the morning it looked as though the weather might clear, the cloudy sky brightening to a high, white opalescence, but then it closed in once again. By mid-day the snow was falling steadily, clouds lowering to blot out the mountains entirely.

Ralph had never seen a storm make men so cheerful; they walked about the ship whistling, the shoulders and folds of their dark coats dusted with snowflakes, thanking providence for an overcast that made air attacks almost impossible. Yet it was that very lack of visibility that worried Ralph. In the swirl of blowing snow, the outlines of the fjord itself faded into featureless whiteness. Across the fjord the _Stella Maria_ 's opposite number, going about its own patrol, was a ghost whose existence could be inferred rather than clearly discerned. The men on watch squinted into the sudden white-out with furrowed brows, shading their eyes to little effect.

Back in the wheelhouse there came a sudden staccato of Morse from the wireless set.

Ralph had just time to think, _breaking w/t silence, this had better be important_ , before he began automatically to decipher the message. In the wheelhouse Tanner was scribbling hurriedly with a blunt pencil. He came to the end of the message at the same time Ralph did, and looked up with an expression of amazement on his face.

"Lieutenant Lanyon, signal from HMS _Wycombe_ in Vest Fjord. Warships sighted, incoming. Believed to be hostile. We have orders..."

"...to challenge them," finished Ralph.

His heart had begun to hammer immediately. It was the drum-beat of war. He found that he was not entirely sorry.

"Action stations," he continued, in a voice now pitched for command. "Steer thirty degrees, full ahead."

Dimly through the snow he could make out their opposite number changing course, responding to the same signal. Behind the intervals of the _Stella Maria_ 's bell there was a faint and distant echo. Tanner only looked faintly put out that he had not been the one, after all, to deliver the news.

Fairchild came tumbling onto the bridge, looking up to the sky as though he no longer expected to find danger anywhere else.

"What is it?" he said, most irregularly.

Ralph gave his sublieutenant a quick report, no less economical than the signal.

"We may have a naval battle yet," he concluded.

Inescapably he found himself thinking of the last stand of the _Rawalpindi_. A lightly armed merchant cruiser on the Northern Patrol, she had encountered two German battleships off the Faroes back in November. After raising the alarm, she had held her ground, and fought, and been destroyed, as her captain must have known from the start that she would be. It occurred to Ralph now, uselessly, that she had been both larger and far more heavily armed than the _Stella Maria_. No matter.

Fairchild, as if reading his thoughts, leaned in towards Ralph.

"Sir, if we..."

"I'm hoping not. But we'll do what we have to do."

"Agreed."

With that quiet understanding they sailed out to meet the unknown ships. All hands were at their stations, all the guns manned. Fairchild, at Ralph's orders, broke out the rifles and revolvers from their place in the wardroom and distributed them to the crew. 

As for Ralph, he had his own service weapon. Apart from a hostile boarding he could not think of any circumstance under which he would use it—and surely he would not let it come to that, either sinking or surrender would be better—but it reassured him to know that this small discretion remained in his own hands.

It was an agonising wait as the _Stella Maria_ steamed towards the sea at her full ten knots. Not fast enough, never fast enough. Twenty minutes went by with nothing but sea and shore and snow. They seemed alone in the universe, locked in a white, inaccessible circle of hell.

A dark shape appeared out of the blizzard, looming suddenly, her guns already well within range. A destroyer. Close behind her was another. Indrawn breaths; men shifted, impatient, terrified, at their stations.

"Hold fast," said Ralph. "Not before my order."

Tanner, with the Aldis lamp, was already flashing out the challenge of the day. Ralph, waiting as helplessly as any of his crew, itched to rip the lamp from his hands.

A dim light, attenuated almost to invisibility by the snowfall flashed out on the bow of the destroyer. Again. Again.

"It's ours," said Tanner. "It's ours."

Ralph did not believe it, though he had seen the signal himself. Every muscle in his body was tensed, ready to fight, ready to open fire.

"It's ours," Tanner repeated, more softly, his tone almost wondering.

"Stand down!" shouted Ralph quickly. "Friendly ships, stand down!"

Fairchild slapped him on the back in jubilation and then quickly got hold of himself. "Stand down!" he echoed.

Down on the deck there was nervous laughter as the men secured their guns.

"Looked like you was about to shit yourself," someone was saying.

"Take a look in the bloody mirror before you say that," said another.

"Signal them," ordered Ralph. " _HMT Stella Maria on anti-submarine patrol. Who are you and where are you bound?_ And Sub, have the coxs'n put those rifles back into store. We won't be needing them."

Now he was confident enough to look away from the Aldis lamp, trusting Tanner to handle the routine exchange. Discreetly, in the pause when there was nothing more to be done, he dried his palms on his wool trousers.

The destroyers were coming on now, moving at a full clip, thirty knots or more to the _Stella Maria_ 's ten. On the deck men were waving jovially, apparently unconcerned. Behind the two dark shapes in the snowstorm loomed another, larger yet.

" _HMS Encounter_ ," translated Tanner. " _Escorting HMS Warspite, with HMS Faulknor, Foxhound, Havock, Hero, Hostile and Zulu. Proceeding to bombard Narvik_."

Seven destroyers and a battleship. Ralph whistled respectfully.

"Send them greetings and wish them good luck."

Majestically, unconcernedly, the flotilla carried on its way, not slackening its speed. The Stella Maria tossed in the churning water of its wake, for a moment as if she were riding the waves of the open sea. Ralph counted the ships past and then they were gone, into the blizzard.

"Now we'll see something," said the coxswain.

That evening, when the snow had stopped and the sullen grey clouds had lifted beyond the mountain peaks, there came a faint booming which passed at first for unseasonal thunder. It was of course the sound, ten miles distant, of the _Warspite_ pounding Narvik with her fifteen-inch naval guns. Intermittently, fainter, came the guns of the destroyers.

It was satisfying, after so many days of appalling vulnerability, to hear the Royal Navy getting their own back at last. Though it was after pipe down, men drifted on deck to smoke and listen to the unfolding drama. Ralph was one of them.

Fairchild was on watch on the bridge, an old college scarf wound round his neck and across his face. With the clearing weather the temperature had dropped and it was now well below freezing. Off to the west, out to sea, the sky was deeply purple between ragged clouds.

"Does the heart good," he said briskly, rubbing his gloved hands together and thrusting them into his pockets.

"One's half tempted to go and join in the fun," said Ralph.

Temptation came in many forms. He was tempted also to pull Fairchild close, though that constant physical pull had been tempered by familiarity into something that could be remembered and corrected for by habit, as one knew how to correct for the tidal flow in a familiar channel. But both were no less hazardous for that. A man could get taken off his guard and it would be all up. Holed beneath the waterline.

More men came up on deck, laughing raucously at the end of a dirty joke.

"...and she said, _that's me mum_."

Behind the scarf, Fairchild looked concerned. "I've been letting them have a listen, I didn't see the harm in it. I shall order them back if..."

"No, let them."

Together Ralph and his sublieutenant stood, shoulder to shoulder, watching the sun set.

"That rendezvous this afternoon," said Fairchild quietly, lost in a swirl of his own warm breath. "I really thought we..."

"So did I," replied Ralph. "But there's no point dwelling on it."

"I think there's every point in dwelling on the fact of being alive," said the sublieutenant, as though Ralph had entirely missed the point.

***

Clearer weather brought a return of the air raids, hotter than before. Daily the _Warspite_ and her destroyer escort proceeded into the Ofot Fjord to soften up Narvik for the ground assault; daily they proceeded back out to sea, leaving the trawlers on their lonely patrols.

It was quietly hellish work, hours of enforced helplessness spent sheltering against cliffs that provided precious little shelter. During those hours they could not do their Asdic sweeps; they could do nothing save waste their ammunition on fruitless target-shooting and, if they dared, shake their fists at the sky.

By the third day of this, Ralph had had enough. It was an unexpectedly quiet day and perhaps it was this that made him restless. An hour after the procession had passed by, when the echoes of the guns were sounding from the mountainsides, he gave the order to set a course to Narvik.

"Thought we'd try a stationery target for a change," said Ralph to Fairchild. "Give the men a bit of practice. It will be good for morale if nothing else."

Really, if he had been honest with himself, it was his own morale that was in need of improvement. But no matter; he could hardly be the only one.

For all the time they had spent stationed in Ofot Fjord, Narvik had remained a phantom of the imagination. Surprisingly quickly they rounded the last headland and saw the town spread out before them. It was built on a peninsula reaching out into the fjord, its wooden houses gaily painted and scattered up the hillside behind. It was backed by mountains. 

It reminded Ralph of the towns that he had seen in Iceland as a schoolboy, only this was no holiday destination. Smoke poured upwards from the half-ruined town. Houses were smashed, tilting crazily. The small harbour was blocked with sunken ships, remnants of the two naval battles.

 _What was I thinking?_ thought Ralph in sudden revulsion. _Who the hell calls this a nice day out?_

A moment later he reminded himself that the town was stiff with Germans. It was no pleasure cruise, he had never thought it was. This was war, and blame for the destruction of Narvik could hardly be laid on the Royal Navy.

Down on the foc'sle the men were readying high explosive shells—two-pounders—for the pom-pom gun. Across the fjord the _Warspite_ was hammering 2000-pound shells into the largely defenceless town. Something about the slow deliberateness of her firing rate—twice a minute was the standard, and on checking his watch he found that she was not far off it—made each round seem the more portentous.

 _We can beat her on that at least_ , though Ralph wryly.

He intended to bring the _Stella Maria_ up alongside one of _Warspite_ 's retinue of destroyers, not too close to the shore and yet not so far away that her fire would fall short of its target, a constraint of which he was very conscious.

The Aldis lamp on the destroyer began to flash: _What ship and what do you want?_

Tanner gave Ralph a questioning glance from under his heavy eyelids. He had largely given up the formality of reading out signals as they came in; he knew full well that Ralph could read Morse faster and more accurately, although the fact that Ralph had had seven years of practice did not seem to stop him resenting Ralph for it.

"Signal him, _HMT Stella Maria come to join in the bombardment_."

The reply was short, quick, and consisted of seven letters. There were four men on the _Stella Maria_ who were passable in Morse—Ralph, Tanner, Fairchild and the coxswain—and they all came out with it simultaneously:

" _Fuck off_."

It was the coxswain who started laughing first. "Would you call that an order, sir, or more of a suggestion?"

"I'd call it an order," said Ralph, a sort of wry amusement battling with the wounded pride that he believed he ought to feel. "Or at least I'd say we ought to make ourselves scarce before we find out how they'd phrase the order. It can't be helped. We've had our fun. But let's give the Germans one round before we go."

After her salute to the Nazis, the Stella Maria sailed gaily out into the Ofot Fjord once again.


	8. Chapter 8

Every air raid followed the same pattern: the order to action stations, the incessant ringing of the bell, the _Stella Maria_ 's dash at high revs to the sheltering cliffs at the edge of the fjord. As day wore after day even the heavy jolt of adrenalin, the pounding of his heart, began to seem monotonous in their familiarity. He would not have been surprised if it had gone on forever like that; he was only surprised when it did not.

Afterwards Ralph remembered that first moment of shock, the sight of blood splashed across the foc'sle deck, a vivid red against the crusted snow and ice. Seconds later—perhaps he gave another order in the interim—he saw that Fairchild, at his post down at the pom-pom, was no longer on his feet.

He could not leave his post; he did not leave his post. It never occurred to him. He remained on the bridge, as numb as if he'd been plunged into Arctic water, until the single Stuka broke off its attack—a miscommunication? a chancer?—and rejoined the group flying north. It seemed an eternity.

Strafing machine gun fire echoed in his ears. Or perhaps it was the rushing of his own heart. 

Ralph clattered down the ladder to the deck, taking the last three rungs at a jump. By the time he reached the pom-pom gun, Fairchild was struggling to stand. His cap had been knocked askew; he reached up to straighten it at Ralph approached, then fell back again, wincing. His face was deadly pale.

Macallister was swearing a bloody streak. He held up a hand, his finger already wrapped in a dirty handkerchief. The splashed blood on the deck was his.

"Clipped me, the bastard," he said. "Fuck! It doesn't half..."

"Not now," said Ralph.

"I think I caught one, sir," said Fairchild. His voice had a note of apology. "Possibly more than one."

"It's all right," replied Ralph quickly. "It's all right, stay still."

He knelt down, hitching his trousers up a bit. He put his arm around Fairchild; the sublieutenant slumped trustingly against him. It felt long-anticipated, long-rehearsed, as if Ralph had known all these months. The only way he could take Fairchild into his arms.

"I don't..." said the sublieutenant. His breathing had a laboured edge to it, as if he had just arrived on deck at a run. "One does feel it, rather. But poor Fletcher-Cooke... he had it worse, don't you think? If you'll help me up, sir, I'll get below. I can still..."

He laid his hand on Ralph's arm, squeezed hard as if to prove his own fitness. Once again he began to try to get to his feet. In that moment, with help, he probably could have managed it.

"Please, sir."

"Stay still," said Ralph. "It's an order."

He looked up into a semicircle of faces: his crew, strain and anxiety and shock on their white faces.

"We'll take him to the mess," said the coxswain.

"No, to the wardroom, it's nearer. Coxs'n, you have the bridge; get up there and get your lookouts to their posts. Sanders, help me with the sub. Norris, you see to Macallister. Take _him_ to the mess. Don't let them catch us napping."

From the back of the crowd of matelots he thought he heard a man muttering _they have_ ; perhaps it was in his own mind.

Down in the wardroom all seemed calm. The sun shone aslant across the floor; the teakettle sat ready in its place; on the table lay a chart of the approaches to Harstad and a fortnight-old copy of _Punch_. Ralph swept these off onto the floor.

"I was getting tired of reading that issue anyway," observed Fairchild as they laid him on the table. 

He sounded, thought Ralph, already weaker.

"Sanders, get me the scissors and the medical kit."

Ralph stripped his sublieutenant down with automatic, un-tender motions, in that moment not needing to pretend. Bridge coat; uniform jacket; a submariners jumper which Ralph cut off of Fairchild, not wanting to move his patient more than necessary. With the air raids so constant they had not been out of their clothes in days. Fairchild smelt much as Ralph expected he himself did, a fug of sweat, smoke, Cordite and fear. It was easy to be unsentimental.

Under the jumper was a light silk shirt, dark blue, which Fairchild must once upon a time have worn at Oxford. It came away soaked with blood from the wounds that Ralph had known he would find. Exposed, Fairchild's torso was vulnerably pale, stippled with gooseflesh even in the warmth of the wardroom. Ralph's sentimentality returned, a sudden rush of feeling. He shook his head, angry with himself.

"Bad?" said Fairchild, half lifting his head.

"Not so bad."

A morphine ampoule from the kit, already made up. Ralph quickly injected Fairchild with it.

"You'll feel that soon," he said.

Fairchild essayed a smile. It seemed to Ralph unwarrantedly generous, as Fairchild's smiles always did. A gift of grace to an unregenerate sinner.

"Now hold your breath. I'm rolling you onto your side. I must look."

A nod. Ralph did it as gently as he could. Fairchild's breath caught quietly; it could not have been called a sob.

If one went by what was visible, then Ralph's reassuring words had not been entirely a lie. Fairchild had been struck by two bullets, one a hands-breadth below the left nipple and another just below his belly button. The wounds were small enough that Ralph could have covered one with his thumb. On Fairchild's back Ralph found, as he had expected, the exit wounds: larger, both bleeding freely, a clean shot through and through. Blood always looked more than it was; the bleeding could be stopped. 

And that was about the only thing that could be done.

The remains of the jumper would do to put pressure on the wounds. Ralph beckoned Sanders over, gestured towards Fairchild's back.

"Here. Both hands. Yes, hard. Don't let up, and don't worry about hurting him; this is the best thing you can do."

Sanders obeyed without question barely a month after Ralph had committed him to a fortnight of detention ashore. A big, burly man, his spread hands covered most of Fairchild's torso. He stood faithfully, saying nothing, doing just as he was asked. Ralph loved him for it.

Ralph busied himself with bandaging the wounds. Gauze and scissors and tape. All very correct and, he suspected, very useless.

No doubt there was a sickbay on the _Warspite_ , fully equipped, with a qualified surgeon who would have operated without a second thought. Not an amateur bungler like Ralph. He'd seen gunshot wounds before: the aftermath of a bar fight in Durban, a bankrupt passenger on the Singapore-Hong Kong run who'd shot himself sooner than face his debts ashore. The former had been none of his business and the latter had been over before he'd found a steward to unlock the cabin door. Nothing like this. Even Alec would have been out of his depth here.

Swaleby put his head around the door. "Sorry sir, only Norris wants you to come look at Macallister."

Ralph told himself that a vigil would do no good and that five minutes would make no difference. He got up and went, leaving Sanders behind with Fairchild.

Notwithstanding the intermittent trail of dripping blood that led down the passageway to the mess, Macallister seemed in good spirits. Perhaps the morphine had something to do with that. He'd lost the tip of his index finger, cleanly gone; no one knew where the missing part might be.

"Seagulls, sir," volunteered Norris, who ought to have known better.

Ralph strongly suspected that Macallister had not been the victim of a Nazi bullet at all. Far more likely that he'd been distracted when Fairchild was shot, and caught his finger in the action of the pom-pom. Ralph did not say this. He only cleaned the wound, dusted it with Sulfa and bandaged it, a cursory job of which he would have been ashamed under other circumstances. He gave Macallister a dose of anti-tetanic serum and tried, without success, to avoid resenting his matelot for the sin of having been spared.

"And for God's sake," said Ralph to the room at large, "someone go and swab the deck. It's a disgrace."

***

When Ralph stepped into the wardroom, Fairchild's eyes wandered to the door, but he did not attempt a smile this time. His face was ashen, his forehead beaded with sweat. 

"Has the bleeding stopped?" 

Ralph's voice sounded harsh and curt in his own ears. Sanders looked up as if startled out of a dream. 

"Think it has, sir. Slowed down at any rate."

One could see the blood beginning to tinge the white dressings, but Sanders was correct. It was not the external bleeding about which one needed to worry.

"Right. You've done well; that will be all." 

There was no point in having men standing about if there was nothing to be done. Sanders looked relieved; he saluted awkwardly and left.

Ralph sat down at his sublieutenant's side. Fairchild's eyes flickered across Ralph's face as if he were reading a message that he could not quite understand. They were only half focused. His breathing was laboured.

"Tell me if it's still hurting," Ralph said finally. "I'll give you more morphine. There's no point in heroics."

Fairchild shook his head faintly, a distant expression on his face.

"You'll tell Jeanie, won't you, when you see her..."

"You can tell her yourself when we're back in Aberdeen."

Ralph detested himself for saying this as soon as he had done so. Fairchild knew the truth; they both knew. The look on his face was uncomprehending, as though he could not believe that Ralph would betray him so.

A few minutes later Fairchild spoke again, wistfully, as though afraid that he were asking too much. "I could just do with a sip of tea..."

Already the effort was perceptibly more. He coughed a little, a dry cough.

"I can't give it you," said Ralph. "I'm sorry."

 _What are you playing at?_ he thought. _You know he's dying. He knows it too. What difference can it make now, whatever it says in the manual?_

"I'll put the kettle on," he said a moment later. "Rest. Don't tire yourself."

It was purely selfish; he could not bear to hear any more. Fairchild had, he thought, the easier part. 

Ralph got up and went over to the small hob. Thankfully there was water already; he lit the gas, automatically put out the teapot, with two heaping spoonfuls of Darjeeling. He sensed Fairchild's gaze following him.

When he returned to Fairchild's side, he reached out and laid his hand on the young man's head, ruffling the light brown hair as he had always longed to do.

"There," he said. "You can close your eyes now. I'm right here."

Fairchild's eyelids fluttered gratefully closed, as though he had been waiting permission to slip away. Five minutes later, when the kettle boiled, he showed no signs of having heard. 

He breathed shallowly, his eyes still closed. He said nothing more.

It was a kind death, as far as wartime went; he did not cry, or scream, or beg for release. Except that it was twenty long minutes before he died.

Ralph sat with a cooling, untouched teapot at his elbow, his hand still gently resting in Fairchild's hair. He drew a deep, shuddering breath, then leaned forward and kissed the cold forehead. 

He covered the body with a wool blanket off his own bed, one of those that had been issued by Jeanie Mackintosh from the Aberdeen stores. It seemed a lifetime ago and yet all part and parcel of the same thing. 

_Rotten from the start,_ he told himself. _And that was you._

For a moment his mind was blank. He could not think what he ought to do next, whether there were anything one could do, whether it was even certain that life could go on for him when it had come to an end for Fairchild. Having feared and anticipated this moment he found that he had never rehearsed its aftermath, only envisioning a dead stop. And then the grave.

Another breath later his mind leapt back into gear; now it seemed that there had never been any doubt. He knew what must be done and that there was no excuse for waiting to do it.

Stepping across the room to the bridge speaking tube, he called for Signalman Tanner.

Tanner appeared promptly, coming into the room as though he thought time was of the essence. When he saw the body, he stopped short, one question dying on his lips as another took its place.

"Jesus," he said. "I never thought... what can I do? Do you have a signal for me, sir?"

"I suppose I will do, but it can't help him now." Ralph paused. "You're a CW candidate, aren't you, Tanner?"

Ralph's signalman stared at him as though the question had no relevance whatsoever. "Yes, sir, but..."

"Officer-like qualities. Well, this is your chance."

Tanner shook his head, baffled.

"Field promotion, unofficially," said Ralph. "I can't run the ship alone. Sublieutenant Tanner."

***

For the rest of the day Ralph moved through his duties like a man numbed by cold, clumsy and distant, welcoming the surcease from pain. He must have given orders, for the ship kept running, though everything was hushed around him. Whether this was out of consideration for his feelings or the natural mourning of the ship, he did not know. Though a First Lieutenant did not traditionally endear himself to the crew, everyone had seemed to love Fairchild.

Ralph stood on the bridge, weary hour after weary hour, drilling Tanner on the rudiments of an officer's knowledge, everything that he might need to know to get the _Stella Maria_ back to British shores. The young man's awkwardness, by turns ignorant and conceited, grated on Ralph painfully. But there was no room for personal taste—there had never been room for personal taste—and there was no excuse for any decent interval of delay. This was a matter of life, not death, and life must always take the priority.

With Fairchild gone, Ralph could not imagine himself invulnerable, nor allow himself to remain indispensable.

Finally he left the coxswain with the bridge and went below to look up the words of the funeral service: another role that he, the captain, would have to perform. He took the Book of Common Prayer from its place in the wardroom into his cabin, locked the door, and stared blankly at the place where the book had fallen open. There was a dogeared page which had not been there when it had been brought new aboard ship. It was the marriage ceremony, and no one could have marked it but Fairchild himself.

Only then did Ralph break down and cry. It was brief and silent; he had learnt that necessity as a boy of seven, when sent away to prep school. Soon after that he had learnt it was better not to cry at all.

It seemed that day as though darkness would never fall. It was not until after midnight that they gathered for the funeral, all hands on deck, in the dim royal blue of an arctic twilight. One could only just make out the black outlines of mountains against the sky, like an unlit and abandoned stage set after the curtain has been rung down on the play. It was cold and desolate, the ends of the earth, and this was where his sublieutenant would lie until the second coming. There would be no grave for Fairchild, only the icy water of an arctic fjord. 

Gillies was sniffling audibly. It was a cold, he had been bubbling at the nose for days, a dirty hanky tucked into the sleeve of his duffle coat. Nonetheless the sound of his laboured breathing seemed to speak as mourning, a tribute from the wholly inadequate group that had gathered in Fairchild's memory. Macallister with his bandaged hand was present as well, the abashed shuffle of his boots on the deck showing that perhaps he too finally had come, like Ralph, to feel the indecency of having remained alive.

The shroud—the final, awkward guest—was unearthly pale in the half light. Released from his watch-keeping duties, Norris had spent the afternoon in the mess carefully sewing it from heavy canvas and, with surprising gentleness, preparing the body for burial. (With a strange double vision, Ralph remembered watching through lidded eyes one night in their cabin as Fairchild slipped a white shirt from his shoulders.) He had looked in to see Norris at his work; he had not stayed to watch him taking the final, traditional, stitch through the nose.

 _Forgive me,_ he thought. _I never meant to leave you here. It should have been me; I wish it had._

It occurred to Ralph only now that perhaps he should have been wishing this all along.

Every ceremony seemed to blur together in the dark of that night, the memory of a commissioning with the reality of a funeral with the anticipation of a wedding that would never happen. It was a perverse consummation, all couched in the familiar words of the _Book of Common Prayer_ , and Ralph was both celebrant and chief mourner.

"Man that is born of a woman hath but a short time to live," he read slowly, "and is full of misery. He cometh up, and is cut down, like a flower; he fleeth as it were a shadow, and never continueth in one stay. In the midst of life we are in death: of whom may we seek for succour, but of thee, O Lord, who for our sins art justly displeased?"

In that moment it seemed a description not of Fairchild, but of himself. 

He remembered a funeral at his old school: he had been a new boy then, just barely thirteen, and the death had been that of an Olympian sixth-form prefect. He had not imagined then that a schoolboy could die, much less one so magnificent; the lines of the school memorial to the Great War had then seemed nothing but a list of names. Still less had he imagined the reasons for such a death; it was months later before he learned that the boy had hanged himself, and years after that before he truly understood and, in a brief, clouded moment, considered a similar escape from the living death of his own sins.

"We therefore commit his body to the deep," Ralph continued, "to be turned into corruption, looking for the resurrection of the body, (when the Sea shall give up her dead,) and the life of the world to come, through our Lord Jesus Christ; who at his coming shall change our vile body, that it may be like his glorious body, according to the mighty working, whereby he is able to subdue all things to himself."

They slid Fairchild's body gently, resistlessly, into the sea. The splash was quiet, and cruel. 

The hymn was 'Eternal father, strong to save,' known to every sailor. The crew of the _Stella Maria_ piped up their voices, singing as heartily as Ralph had ever heard them do, and yet they seemed a frail and lonely choir amidst the immensity of the Arctic night. Somewhere Ralph imagined a U-Boat lying on the surface, hatch open to the air for a moment of peace, and German sailors taking off their caps in reverence at the drifting, distant sound of it.

_Oh, hear us when we cry to Thee,  
For those in peril on the sea_

Ralph's imperfect tenor, with its narrow compass, cracked huskily on the final note. He shook his head and blinked hard, grateful that there was no one to see in the dark.

Men lingered on the deck afterwards. They spoke in low murmurs; from somewhere there was a smell of pipe smoke, though Ralph had not seen the flare of the match. It was fully dark now, and slowly beginning to snow. He could dimly make out his own footprints on the dusted deck. There was no one standing at his shoulder.

"Damn it," he said, louder than he had intended. "If there's any man here who hasn't a job to do, I can find him something."

A stir at that. He wondered how long they had expected to stand on deck, purposeless, lingering.

"You heard the captain," said the coxswain. "To your posts or turn in."

He took the advice himself and went below, leaving Tanner and the coxswain to their cold company on the bridge, a four hour watch in place of a man whose eyes were now closed forever.

Though Ralph had been awake since dawn, more than twenty hours earlier, he did not want to sleep. He did not think he ever would. 

He sat down on the edge of his berth, still in his stormcoat and sea boots. Across the cabin, almost close enough to touch, was Fairchild's berth, neatly made—Ralph had taught him that much, at least—with its two wool blankets smoothed carefully down. It made it look oddly as though he had never expected to return. Fairchild had been laid out and buried as innocent as he had been born, without his uniform, without anything; someone had lightly thrown his college scarf across the bed, picked up from where it had fallen on the deck.

It was over, thought Ralph. Every uncertainty, every frustration, every longing, buried as deep as he ever could have wished. All that remained to him now was grief; and those waters, from long experience, he knew how to navigate. Once again he had lost what might have damned and might have saved him. Now it seemed that it had been inevitable, that it could not have been otherwise. He should have known there could only be one ending.

Ralph leaned forward and took up the scarf from the bed, then buried his face in it.


	9. Epilogue

Ralph stared at himself in the tiny cabin mirror and barely recognised his own face.

There was his hair, beginning to be bleached by the summer sun, and in need of cutting. There was the weariness in his blue eyes, the strain lines around them deeper yet. And then there was the beard that he'd grown since that day in the Ofot Fjord, unable to bring himself to touch a razor to his cheek. Or perhaps unwilling to trust himself to do so.

The beard was of respectable growth for a month's standing. It would have been the perfect accessory for a Navy officer were it not that it was, unexpectedly, tinged with ginger, as though it had somehow been coloured by grief.

After Fairchild's death it had been only a few days before the _Stella Maria_ was ordered back to Scapa Flow, via the roundabout route of the evacuation of Åndalsnes. It seemed that even the Admiralty took the view that Ralph could not command a ship on his own, for on the approach to the Romdalsfjord, just reaching a point when lack of sleep alone had begun to sap the will to live, he had been assigned a new sublieutenant off a destroyer. 

Most of the evacuation was a blur in his memory, Army troops and supplies and air raids, world without end. His new sub had been competent enough to get the job done adequately and without fuss; as for the rest, Ralph had simply not cared. It occurred to him now that perhaps this, more than anything else, was the secret to success in wartime.

If so, it was a pose that he could not keep up for long.

On their return to Scotland the crew had been granted two weeks of leave. For most this was welcome; for Ralph it was the occasion of a trip to Aberdeen, to see Jeanie Mackintosh and tell her the story of Fairchild's death. She had heard the news already; he wondered whether it was cruel to bring it home so forcefully once again, even the carefully circumscribed version of events that he offered. It certainly seemed so to him.

He had told her that Fairchild had meant to marry her. That he could not have omitted. Sitting in the front room of the house in Old Aberdeen, listening to her weep, he had thought of the dog-eared page in the _Book of Common Prayer_. She would never be a widow, nor even have the consolation of an engagement ring. He would have offered his sympathy, but it would have come too close to the truth.

That evening he had heard the news that the government had fallen. It seemed only fitting.

Ralph steadied himself against the cabin wall as the ship plunged into an unexpected swell. Outside the porthole an early June sunset was burning into the sea; above, on the bridge, the new sublieutenant was on watch. He had tried his best not to resent the man for not being Fairchild; he had not succeeded. In a fortnight more it would be six months since he had taken command of the _Stella Maria_. There would be no RNPS service badge for Fairchild. Living through those months had proved a task too difficult.

How distant now seemed the commissioning ceremony, standing with Fairchild in the January drizzle in Lowestoft. How distant seemed Norway, the fjords with their melting snows of yesteryear. How distant seemed their current destination, an obscure French holiday resort to which they had been ordered in aid of yet another evacuation.

 _Dunkirk_ , thought Ralph. _It can hardly be worse than Narvik._

**Author's Note:**

> Any errors of seamanship in this story are mine entirely, and not Ralph's.
> 
> Sources consulted include:
> 
> http://www.scapaflow.co/index.php/history_and_archaeology/the_20th_century/war/  
> http://www.naval-history.net/  
> http://www.royal-naval-reserve.co.uk  
> http://www.harry-tates.org.uk/  
> http://www.rnps.lowestoft.org.uk/stannard/admiralty.htm
> 
> Glyn Prysor, _Citizen Sailors: The Royal Navy in the Second World War_
> 
> Brian Lavery, ed., _The Royal Navy Officer's Pocketbook_
> 
> Nicholas Monsarrat, _The Cruel Sea_ and _Three Corvettes_
> 
> Christopher McKee, _Sober Men and True: Sailor Lives in the Royal Navy, 1900-1945_
> 
> Chris Howard Bailey, _The Corvettes and Their Crews: An Oral History_
> 
> Sidney Kerslake, _Coxswain in the Northern Convoys_ (http://www.naval-history.net/WW2Memoir-RussianConvoyCoxswain.htm)
> 
> Jan de Hartog, _The Captain_ and _A Sailor's Life_
> 
> Malcolm Brown and Patricia Meehan, _Scapa Flow_ (WWII reminiscences)
> 
> Brian Lavery, _Churchill's Navy_


End file.
